Monkeys – they are that human
Ridinger, Johann Elias (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). Splendour and Grandeur makes no one Brighter. A monkey poses as the throneworthy and stag, horse, billy-goat, bear, wolf, hare, Ridinger-hound, and other honest mammals are content with it. But the cunning fox lets the tom-cat become the seducer and the monkey “quite ridiculous to all”. Etching and engraving. (1744.) Inscribed: Joh. El. Ridinger inv. del. et exc. Aug. Vind., title in German-Latin-French as above. 34 x 25.6 cm.
Thienemann + Schwarz 777 (FABUL“:” contrary “.” here); Metzner-Raabe, Illustr. Fabelbuch, 1998, vol. II (Bodemann), 123.I. – Sheet 13 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 – though in quite a different manner – William Hogarth, almost of the same age as Ridinger, had attempted by his paintings and prints … Yet while Hogarth and Chodowiecki tried to gain recognition for their (identical) ideas by satirical sets, as A Rake’s Progress, 1735 (compl. set & single sheets available) … Ridinger built on the – especially suitable to him (that is, so he himself, ‘since the hoary times of the ancient ages’) – tradition of the animal fable ”
(Stefan Morét, Ridinger Catalog Darmstadt, 1999, p. 96).
Beyond that at the same time also, creating a new image type, leaving behind once more tradition and field. For, so Ulrike Bodemann in Metzner-Raabe,
“ No similarities 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 great intellectual relationship with the already mentioned Hogarth by the way also unmistakably expressed in Garrick’s epitaph for this:
“ Whose pictured Morals charm the Mind ,
And through the Eye correct the Heart.”
Chronologically interesting in this connection interesting that on the other side of the channel in 1726 John Gay, famous-notorious for his “Beggars Opera” (Brecht, Threepenny Opera!), had presented by his Fables “the most important achieved hitherto by English poets in this kind” (Meyers Konvers.-Lex., 4th ed., VI, 960/II).
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 in favour of a 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. Culminating in the fascination to have created not only a new fable image, but this, once more in itself, developed further to a new level.
Ridinger’s fable image then also a highly momentous 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 the preparatory drawing sold here to the 20th fable inscribed by him with “Fab 31”, that inscribed with “Fabel 29” to the 19th (Weigel, 1869, no. 384), and that further one numbered with “30” known to Thienemann, which has been unconsidered like other, unnumbered, ones, too.
Superb early impression still without the number upper right which not became known to Thienemann, Weigel, Helbing, Schwarz, but appears later. – Traces of the stitching of binding in the a bit torn left paper margin. A tear touching the title repaired acid-freely. – “A very well done plate” (Thienemann).
Offer no. 12,510 / EUR 562. / export price EUR 534. (c. US$ 727.) + shipping
For more single sheets of the set see
“ The fable belongs to the artist as to the poet, and one lighted the other’s light ”
(Chr. L. Hagedorn 1762)
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(Sig. U. B., October 30, 2009)