Was Ridinger shy
at Confrontation with the Own Work ?
Ridinger, Johann Elias (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). The Innocence suppressed by an Invent Pretext. A hare escaped from three dogs on a rock falling a victim to a wonderfully feathered falcon swooping down. Etching and engraving by Martin Elias Ridinger (1731 Augsburg 1780). After 1767. Inscribed in the plate: J. El. Ridinger. inv: et del. / M. El. Ridinger. sc. et exc: A. V., otherwise as above in German, Latin, and French. 33.5 x 24.9 cm.
Thienemann + Schwarz 784; Metzner-Raabe, Illustr. Fabelbuch, 1998, vol. II (Bodemann), 123.I. – Sheet 20 of the Fables. – Quite wonderful impression probably watermarked WANGEN along with a figurative label. – With 5-27 mm wide margins all-around. – The repeated “.” after Ridinger not quoted by Schwarz. Instead of the “:” after “inv” here there only a full stop and instead of the “:” after FABUL mentioned by Thienemann + Schwarz for plates X ff. here always only a full stop.
The extraordinarily rare last supplementary sheet
as the final one 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).
At which in this case Ridinger takes in sight still quite another object, that is a social-political one. As already the title
“The Innocence suppressed by an Invent Pretext”
given the tenor, so it says in the separately printed text by Brockes (1680 Hamburg 1747)
“Enough one lais the blame on the poor , / What never he had done . /
The fresh rage of the mighty birds /
hits very often still the weak hare!”
And Thienemann interpreting: “The falcon speaks to the hare and this replies:
‘ Wait, I will teach you to lead the hounds to my nest, for that they will rob me of my young ones!’ / ‘How could we approach ourselves to your aerie without wings?’ / ‘Yea, yea, always you think on my ruin, do you not have wanted to sell me to the hunter two years ago and badly cursed my young ones?’ / ‘There I does not still was born.’ / ‘So it was your mother. O no longer I can tolerate this bad species.’
After this (the falcon) gripped and lacerated the little hare, which dying still cried: ‘Oh, how it is easy for the malice to suppress the innocence!’ … ‘Enough one lais the blame on the poor …’ ”.
The sentence staying in closest context to the denouncing of the system of absolutism of all times expressed by Brockes/Ridinger by sheets Thienemann 716-719 of the set Fights of Killing Animals. See hereto the 1998 Dresden Address – The Minimized Ridinger.
Artistically beyond all 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, his moreover only newly worked fable conception, in favour of a now also for himself thoroughly newly, sovereignly formulated large flat clearness (exemplarily for this especially 17th + 20th) 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 regret”). What here, however, is seen as a remarkably further developed artistic expressiveness. Culminating just in the fascination to have created not only a new fable image, but this, once more in itself, developed further to a new level.
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
an evidence for it that the artist wished to reinvent himself
by creation of a new type of composition …”
(Exhibition Catalogue Watteau, Washington/Paris/Berlin 1984/85, p. 415).
Relating to Ridinger quite exemplary his “Memento Mori” Schwarz 1426 worked in mezzotint, for that three states could described here for the first time which document a radicalized spiritualization of the civic fine composition of the picture originally Dutch anchored. In this case promoted by the necessity of re-touchings of the mezzotint plate technically conditioned extremely fast wearing off which according to the expert Sandrart (1675) only permits 50-60 good impressions.
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.
The great rarity of the four supplementary sheets 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. 12,514 / EUR 1007. / export price EUR 957. (c. US$ 1284.) + 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)
„ … Toll, die Verbindung der Kunst mit berühmten Männern der Geschichte. Dazu die qualitative Aufmachung … “
(Frau U. K., 2. Januar 2010)