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  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, p. 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 great intellectual relationship with the already mentioned Hogarth by the way also unmistakably expressed in Garrick’s epitaph for this:

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!), by his “Fables” had laid before “the most important achieved hitherto by English poets in this kind” (Meyers Konvers.-Lex., 4^th 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 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 the preparatory drawing sold here to the 20^th fable inscribed by him with “Fab 31”, that inscribed with “Fabel 29” to the 19^th (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$ 743.) + shipping

“ Stumbled upon your excellent website while researching Ludwig Beckmann, and must say that I was most impressed. In any case, since you are the closest I know to an authority on antique German books and prints I am wondering if you could help me pinpoint the origin of a piece I have in my dachshund collection … ”

(Mr. & Mrs. J. L., August 14, 2008)