Ridinger, Johann Elias (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). What a Wickedness it is the Fox Commits here! Reineke, a goose at the neck, ascending a manorial outside staircase in a wood lined with rocks. Etching + engraving by Martin Elias Ridinger (1730 Augsburg 1780). Inscribed: XXII. / Ridinger, sculps., otherwise in German as before and below. 34 x 24.6 cm.

Thienemann + Schwarz 365; Helbing XXXIV, Works by J. E. and M. E. Ridinger, 880: “Very rare” (1900). – Sheet XXII of the 46-sheet set “To the Special Events and Incidents at the Hunt” ( “The rarest set of Ridinger’s sporting line engravings”, Schwerdt 1928) etched exclusively by Martin Elias after predominantly fatherly designs and concluded posthumously in 1779. – In the white upper margin the two tiny pinholes of the original issue and pairwise resp. stitching (harmonizing exactly to the dot: sheet XXIII, Th. 366, of the chamois driven to death by a couple of bearded vultures as just the feathereds’ revenge for Reineke’s outrage here, because

“ He  is  after  innocent  birds  with  cunning  tricks .

And so you, o! human, also have distressed your God, Who by the prey of the animals leads you on his revenge.”

(“If they are missing, so this points to later impressions”, Thienemann)

with  provenance  Von  Behr  of  the  House  Stellichte

assumedly purchased directly from the Ridingers between 1768 + before 1779, so just at times of foundation of the United States. The German Von Behr family itself reaching back far into the centuries. I. a. already in 1470 – 29 years before Columbus! – it was enfeoffed with the water castle in Stellichte, Lower Saxon, as the ancestral seat up to date.

The margins of three sides 2.8-6.2 cm wide, on the left 2.5 cm, 1 cm of which formerly folded stitching margin with tiny stitching hole. Helbing’s copy then “with almost full margin” only. In also impeccable condition and thus of agreed rarity.
Offer no. 14,468

Heubner, Friedrich (Dresden 1886 – before 1955). The Swell. Rowed by a good fellow into the reed for goose – but so far only the shot cartridge cases fill the boat. Pen and ink with wash. Inscribed: F H (19)19. 235 x 300 mm.

Vollmer II, 436. – Cartoon from Heubner’s (the “F” of the monogram here readable as “T”) time in Munich, so editor’s note, for the “(Youth)” or one of the other illustrated papers for which he worked. Title + subtext – in German – in pencil by supposedly a member of the editors.

Heubner was pupil of Julius Diez at the arts-and-crafts school in Munich, then, i. a. with Emil Preetorius, member of the working group of the “6”, “which aimed at a renewal of advertising art. 1932/40 professor for free graphics at the state school for applied arts in Nuremberg”, then at the corresponding academy in Munich.
Offer no. 12,050 / EUR  291. / Export price EUR  276. (c. US$ 446.) + shipping

…  then  rather  have  Professional  Ridinger  catching  it

Ridinger, Johann Elias (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). Anno 1719. This extra Large Wild Goose has been caught Alive by this Princely Pointer near  Maul=brunn  on a Pool in the Reed. Large happening in the foreground, embedded into rich scenery ashore. Etching + engraving. Inscribed: J. El. Rüdinger (sic!) del. sculps. et excud., otherwise in German as above. 1745. 36.8 x 28.1 cm.

Thienemann + Schwarz 278; Ortega y Gasset, (Meditations on the Hunt), 1981, full-page ills. p. 29. – Sheet 36 of the Wondrous Stags and other Animals. – Thematically as sheet 7 includable to the at first 4, then also 6-sheet set of the Pointers Th. 101-104 + 274, 328 + 308, of, however, larger size than the main set. – Almost only in the outer right of the wide white lower margin a little age spotted.
Offer no. 12,068 / EUR  649. / Export price EUR  617. (c. US$ 996.) + shipping

Ridinger, Johann Elias (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). A wicked enemy has here frightened the wild goose; She was hidden with her breed in secure reed. She believed herself quite free of all surprise; But the  polecat  knows to be after her secretly. He attacks her boldly, does not hear her screams, His hunger is satisfied; he is happy besides. In thick reeds, one of the parents taking off, the chicken fleeing, set back a property. Etching + engraving by Martin Elias Ridinger (1730 Augsburg 1780). Inscribed: XIV. / Ioh. El. Ridinger, inv. et del. / Mart. El. Ridinger, sculps. A. V., otherwise in German as before. 28.3 x 26.4 cm.

Thienemann + Schwarz 357. – Sheet XIV of the 46-sheet set “To the Special Events and Incidents at the Hunt” ( “The rarest set of Ridinger’s sporting line engravings”, Schwerdt 1928) etched exclusively by Martin Elias after predominantly fatherly designs and concluded posthumously in 1779. – The set itself “arranged almost throughout so that always two by two correspond with each other and form pendants, just as they have been sold in pairs, too” (Th.). Belonging to here sheet XV, the wild he-cats’ heron hunt.

(“If they are missing, so this points to later impressions”, Thienemann)

with  provenance  Von  Behr  of  the  House  Stellichte

as at the beginning. – Rounded at top. – Margins above + below 7.5 cm wide and here in the outer part most minimally slightly fox-spotted, the sides 1.5 cm and on the outer left with small stitching traces.
Offer no. 14,489

And  so  the  end  of  the  song  sounds

Ridinger, Johann Elias (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). Anno 1720. His Excellency the Count of Ohringen (Hohenlohe-Öhringen) himself has shot this entirely white fox close to Ohrenthal (near Öhringen on the Ohrn in the Ohrn district). “The white fox hanging at the hinder leg, beside it a strong greyhound chained up, before a sleeping one and still three other hounds.” Etching + engraving. (1750/53.) Inscribed: Joh. El. Ridinger Sculps. et excud. Aug. Vind., otherwise in German as above. 34.7 x 25 cm.

Thienemann + Schwarz 298; Ortega y Gasset, (Meditations on the Hunt), Stuttgart 1981, full-page ills. p. 65. – Sheet 56 of the “Wondrous Stags and other Animals” and like the following four other plates there with linings arched at top. – Lower and partly right outer margin barely disturbingly spotted.
Offer no. 12,073 / EUR  698. / Export price EUR  663. (c. US$ 1070.) + shipping

Ridinger, Johann Elias (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). The Innocence is saved often through the Hatred of the Evil. An owl once cheated by the fox warns “a flock of wild geese” to praise the death of the fox as guaranteed. Etching + engraving by Martin Elias Ridinger (1730 Augsburg 1780). After 1767. Inscribed: J. El. Ridinger. inv. et del. / M. El. Ridinger. sc. et exc: A. V., otherwise in German, Latin, and French as before. 33.6 x 24.7 cm.

Thienemann + Schwarz 781; Metzner-Raabe, Illustr. Fabelbuch, 1998, vol. II (Bodemann), 123.I. – Sheet 17 of the Fables. – Small figurative watermark. – The repeated “.” after Ridinger missing in Schwarz who besides mentions a “:” after FABUL instead of the simple dot here. – Additionally to the fine white platemark with also wide papermargin on two sides. In the narrower left one old traces of stitching.

The  extraordinarily  rare  first  supplementary  sheet

of the intellectually as optically exceedingly charming “Instructive Fables from the Animals’ Kingdom for Improvement of the Manners and especially for Instruction of the Youth” by which

“ Ridinger pursued a typical purpose of his epoch. A ‘Correction of Manners’ by the morale efficacy of art  William  Hogarth , almost of the same age as Ridinger, had tried – though in a quite different way – by his paintings and prints … But while Hogarth and Chodowiecki tried to gain recognition of their (same) ideas by satirical sets as ‘A Rake’s Progress’, 1735, … Ridinger tied up to the tradition of the animal fable (that is, so he himself, ‘since the hoary times of the ancient ages’) as especially suitable to him ”

(Stefan Morét, Ridinger Catalogue Darmstadt, 1999, page 96).

Beyond it at the same time, too, creating a new image type, leaving, once more, tradition and field behind himself. For, so Ulrike Bodemann in Metzner-Raabe,

“ No  similarity  to  fable  illustrations  known  hitherto .

Enormous image sizes filled almost entirely by the representation of a central factor of the fable tale. Surroundings mostly dense, natural wood .”

And Regine Timm, ibid., vol. I, p. 171 :

“ In his large plates Ridinger … sometimes has included vegetable growth or rocks, too, dominantly in his illustrations indeed, but without decorative intention. The plants and rocks mean the thicket, the deserted loneliness of the forest, in which the strange tales among the animals happen. ”

The set consists of 20 plates, of which Johann Elias, however, has published only the first sixteen. Presumably by stylistic scruple. For with the four last, etched/engraved only by his eldest, Martin Elias, and published posthumously, he gives up the superabundance of the previous, his moreover only newly worked fable conception, in favour of a now also for himself thoroughly newly, sovereignly formulated large flat clearness with which to grapple with he obviously has shied at the end though. And where to follow him was impossible for Thienemann, too, still one hundred years later (“have less artistic value, but are nevertheless estimable, and their rarity is to be regretted”). What here, however, is seen as a remarkably further developed artistic expressiveness.

Comparable in this connection, as quoted repeatedly by Ridinger, it may be pointed out to Watteau and here to his “Party in the Open/Park” in Berlin, on which Pierre Rosenberg notes: “… the Berlin painting is

(Exhibition Catalogue Watteau, Washington/Paris/Berlin 1984/85, p. 415).

Ridinger’s fable image then also a most highly important milestone within the “basic corpus of about 900 editions of illustrated fable books” up to Chagall’s Lafontaine folio with its 100 etchings worked 200 years later as downright a glaring light for the immortality of the fable illustration.

That Ridinger had created his set originally substantially more voluminously is proven by his preparatory drawing sold here to the 20^th fable inscribed by him with “Fab 31”, that to the 19^th inscribed with “Fabel 29.” (Weigel, 1869, no. 384), and that further one numbered with “30” known to Thienemann, which has been unconsidered like other, unnumbered, ones, too.

The great rarity of the four supplementary sheets here as practically programmed known to literature since Thienemann’s statement of 1856: they “make themselves scarce, are not to be found already in some older editions, and have been left out completely in the newest, what however is to be regretted” (p. 151).

Accordingly then the 1889 catalogue of the Coppenrath Collection on the 20-sheet copy: “Fine chief set … Rare”. And in 1900 Helbing qualified in his 1554-item Ridinger catalogue (XXXIV): “The last (4) numbers are of highest rarity”. And while except for 12 + 13 he owned besides a complete copy multiple single copies of the first sixteen while of the last four only 17 + 19 in one additionally copy each. On the market till today then almost only the 16-sheet basic set.

After all the different printing states of the title, documenting the repeated editions, most beautiful proof for the success of the work, which obviously has reached his special target group, the youth.
Offer no. 12,511 / EUR  946. / Export price EUR  899. (c. US$ 1451.) + shipping

“ Thanks for shipping the print. It has arrived here in excellent shape. Happy holidays ”

(Mr. H. A. P., December 12, 2001)