Ridinger, Johann Elias (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). Fabul 17-20. Group of the four supplementary sheets (all). Etchings with engraving by Martin Elias Ridinger (1730 Augsburg 1780). After 1767. Inscribed: J. E(l). Ridinger. inv(./:) et del. / M. El. Ridinger. sc. et exc(:/.) A. V., otherwise in German, Latin, and French as below. 33.6 x 24.7 cm.

Thienemann + Schwarz 781-784; Metzner-Raabe, Illustr. Fabelbuch, 1998, vol. II (Bodemann), 123.I. – Sheets 17-20 of the Fables. – 3 sheets with figurative and typographic watermark resp. – The repeated “.” after Ridinger missing in Schwarz who besides mentions a “:” after FABUL instead of the simple dot here. Instead of the partial “:” after “exc” and “inv” resp. here there just a “.”. – With fine white plate and papermargins. In the left one old traces of stitching. – Especially 18-20 in wonderful to really marvellous impressions.

The Innocence is saved often through the Hatred of the Evil
Servitude taken up for Love of Splendor one shall endure with Patience
Foolish Conceit about Foreign Beauties deserves reasonable People’s Contempt
The Innocence suppressed by an Invent Pretext.

The  extraordinarily  rare  four  supplementary  sheets

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 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, 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 17^th + 20^th) 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 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

(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 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.

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. 14,129  /  price on request

–  You  save  EUR  235  compared  with  the  sum  of  the  single  sheets !  –

„ vielen Dank für die schnelle und unkomplizierte Lieferung “

(Herr H.-G. S., 27. August 2008)