Normandy – Weirotter, Franz Edmund (Innsbruck 1730 – Vienna 1771). Vues de la Normandie. Set of 10 (instead of 12) landscape etchings + aquatints (2). Inscribed: dessiné d’après Nature / et Gravé par F. E. Weirotter / AParis chés Wille Graveur du Roi Quay des Augustins. (pl. 1) and F. E. Weirotter fecit. resp. Ca. 15 x 21 cm.
Nagler 12. – Without plates 11 + 12, but not impairing. – With the dedication to M. Brillon Duperon and the address of Johann Georg Willes (Upper Mill in the Beaver Valley near Gießen 1715 – Paris 1808), the “private representative of German culture in France” (Decultot and others, Wille Correspondence, 1999, p. 1) whose pupil Weirotter was.
Fine Coastal Landscape Sceneries , enriched with the fishermen and peasants observed during their occupation.
With Weirotter the landscape etching experienced a fine culmination and in 1766 Schmutzer, then director of the Vienna Academy, recommended Maria Theresa the appointment to the academy of the still young artist to take over the landscape subject there. According to Schmutzer’s report for the empress the artist in his mid-thirties made
“ with his etched landscapes
which would be bought willingly in England , the Netherlands , and Germany
4-5000 fl. annually ”.
The suggestion was accepted immediately by the Privy Council, because Weirotter otherwise “already would have a call to Saxony in hands”. But at his much too early death “his complete artistic bequest found no market in Vienna; it left to Paris. Connoisseurs and friends of his sheets
had to pay dearly for impressions of single sheets …
As etcher Weirotter counts to the most eminent artists … ”
(ADB XLI [1896], 520 f.),
whereby he “developed a truly astonishing activity on both the fields assigned to him (in Vienna), the landscape drawing and the etching,
and has given impetuses influencing still today ”
(Thieme-Becker XXXV [1942], 309, quoting Lützow).
His whole ability is reflected by the works after own invention as here. His admiration with the contemporaries follows from letters by and to Wille as the German art pope residing in Paris. So Winckelmann on occasion of Weirotter’s stay in Rome “Mister Weirotter has made me … a present with own works,
which I reckon among the best of the kind
… This young artist will be a credit to his native country”. And in glance backward at the preceded Paris period of training with Wille (1759/63) this to Hagedorn in Dresden “He is so completed with drawing that his drawings look far more effortless then his paintings”. And as collector the Leipsic banker Gottfried Winckler “I have no doubt, that Mr.
Weirotter will deliver to us many beautiful after the Italian journey ”.
Quoted after Decultot and others as editors, Wille Correspondence, Tübingen 1999, pp. 314, 316, 318, each from 1764.
“ Weirotter – so Gerson, (Spread and Aftereffect of the Dutch Painting of the 17th Century, 2nd ed., 1983, p. 338 – worked also after P. Molijn, Jan van Goyen, Aert van der Neer – and Dietricy.
His own inventions are correspondingly Dutch . ”
Offer no. 15,452 / EUR 1200. / export price EUR 1140. (c. US$ 1596.) + shipping
„ ich habe mich nun doch entschlossen, den Ridinger zu veräußern und bitte um Zusendung des angebotenen freigemachten Verpackungsmaterials … (Und) ich danke Ihnen für die ausführliche Anleitung zum Verpacken des Ridingers .... (Und) Ihnen nochmals für die äußerst angenehme Kommunikation dankend … (Und) das Geld ist bereits auf meinem Konto angekommen, das ging ja wirklich schnell, vielen Dank dafür … “
(Herr C. S., 15., 18., 29. + 30. Dezember 2009)