Ridinger, Johann Elias (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). La Trape du Loup. The Wolf Trap or Pit. “Just as the wolf is a very voracious hungry and cunning animal, so by good sportsmen its cunning is betrayed by counter-cunning …” In mountainous landscape four wolves, expected by three hunters lying in wait and their Alsatian, strive for a living duck or goose on a wolf disk. Etching & engraving. (1729.) Inscribed: avec privil. de Sa. Majeste Imperl. / Ioh. El. Ridinger inv. pinx. sculps. et excud. A.V. /, otherwise as above and with German-French didactic text. 30.1 x 22.7 cm.
Th. + Schwarz 18; Catalog Weigel XXVIII (1857), Ridinger appendix 3A. – From the unnumbered 36-sheet Princes’ Pleasure , listed by literature as its 6th sheet, and here one of the 8 small-sized ones as apparently conceived intentionally by Ridinger and rather not meant as pilot projects as Thienemann assumes.
A 1728 drawing on the market in the late ’50s of corresponding size, pictorially still deviating – only one wolf, no hunters – was inscribed as How the Wolf is brought onto the Disk with the Goose and catched in the pit. However, the repetition of the same sujet Th. 84 of the set of the Means to Capture of 1750 with otherwise the same text refers to a duck.
Early impression of deeply staggered chiaroscuro on full sheet (40.3 x 50.3 cm) in the meaning of Weigel’s A quality (“Old impressions with the original title. The paper has lines as watermark.”) with watermark Great Fleur-de-lis (Strasbourg?). In the interest of optically more balanced sheet proportions later the half-size sheets were printed on smaller paper not conforming to binding.
Offer no. 15,462 / EUR 590. / export price EUR 561. (c. US$ 764.) + shipping
“ The prints arrived safely. What is your return policy? My boss, doesn’t like the images, which I understand is subjective (– probably in reaction on the 11th September –) and no reflection on the condition or any representations you made. Sorry to bother you with this ”
(Mrs. A. P., September 26, 2001)