Ridinger, Johann Elias (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). The Stag turns to Bay, and fights off the Hounds! At the foot of a mighty oak, keeping down two of the hounds with antlers and legs resp., while the piqueurs hold back the pack and blow the prince call. The rest of the hunting party approaching from the right and the middle distance. Etching and engraving. Inscribed: Joh. El. Ridinger del. fec. et excud. Aug. Vind., otherwise in German as above. 31.6 x 48.6 cm.

Thienemann + Schwarz 60; Weigel, Art Stock Catalogue, 4a + 16545 (“old now only rarely occurring impressions”, 1847!); Stubbe, Johann Elias Ridinger, 1966, pp. 15 f. + plate 8. – Extensive 8-line subtext in German.

On at the sides 6.3-8.3, above and below 2.5 and 7.5 cm resp. wide-margined buff laid paper with wordmark watermark. – Upper left tear reaching close to the lining of the picture along with an (out) fissuredness at the four publisher’s stitching in the left lateral margin still touching the wide white platemark backed acid-freely just as a minimal tear in the lower margin and a thin spot in the upper left corner area. The lateral margins with folding trace from previous narrow turning down.

Marvelous impression and therefore fully valid illustrating Wolf Stubbe’s (till 1969 Supreme Custodian of the print room of the Hamburg Art Gallery) rating of just this sheet :

“ … belongs the engraving on which the stag faces the pack … How variedly moved the groups … how clever here the interdiction of the foreground by the very differently dark weed triangles … Foremost, however, the rococo-bright light gleaming through of the whole wide scene on

the  impressing  evidence  of  Ridinger’s  mature  art  of  engraving !

It takes very much artistic intelligence to achieve

this  just  as  delicate  as  animating  effect  of  light .

By it, if he knows to handle it, the engraver possesses a decisive means

for  one  of  the  essential  effects

the art of engraving can achieve at all. ”

And as a whole this “late imposing series of the par force hunt” is for him

an  absolutum  of  harmony  and  ripe  mastership

as he explains by example of its sheets 8 (Th. 56) and this here in comparison to the corresponding ones of the early “Princely Hunting Pleasure”. Accordingly, too, Rolf Biedermann:

“ … in the … ‘Par Force Hunt’ … the compactness of the picture setting by homogeneous light effect and greater approximation of tone values prevails. Added a more deep-spaced formation of the landscapes and a closer clamping of the composition of figures ”

(Ridinger Catalogue Augsburg 1967, p. 3 of the introduction). – It belongs

„ to  the  most  wanted  works  by  our  master ,

all the more as after the abolition of the par force hunt it even got a historical value “ (Thienemann) – and shows in four parts

the  complete  course  of  a  classic  par  force  hunt

whose inventor, according to Döbel, Saint Hubert „shall be“ – see on this in general as in detail Gisela Siebert, Kranichstein, 64 f. – and whose respective stations are explained by the extensive subtext.

“ In the fast pursuit of the stag by the pack and the mounted hunters, in his distinction from the other deer and in finding again the lost trace charm and meaning of this hunt were based. ‘It is the same an amusing and pleasant hunt for those who enjoy riding, want to hear the sound of the hounds, and estimate the blowing, as in which actually the hunt consists of’ … Döbel writes in his … ‘Jäger-Practica’. The par force hunt requested excellent huntsmen … who had to be at the peak of hunting training of their age, had to know the hunt and ‘correct signs’ of the stag, command their horse, work with the hounds, and blow the horn ”

(Siebert, op. cit., 56).

So  about  the  rank  of  the  set  there is unanimity in the old as in the present literature. From Nagler’s rating of 1843

“ One  of  the  most  beautiful  works  by  Riedinger ”

over Thienemann’s and that by W. Schmidt in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (XXVIII, 507) of 1889 up to count Solms-Laubach’s remark of 1961 considering the engraving here illustrated by him :

Of the preparatory drawings three are dated from 1746 (Th. p. 274, album I, b to Th. Th. 49 and one not engraved + Schwerdt III, 216, bottom 1 to this sheet) as well as one from 1750 (Schwerdt, as before, 2 to Th. Th. 56), both the latter as variants.
Offer no. 14,553 / EUR  1290. / Export price EUR  1226. (c. US$ 1979.) + shipping

„ Greetings from your Italian friend and Beethoven collector … Please inform me … “

(Sign. L. B., December 10, 2005)