Drawn – Cut Up – Pasted In – Saved
Looked behind the Master’s Scenes
Wintter, Joseph Georg (1751 Munich 1789).
Biting Horses, driven apart by the groom. Stallion in vivacious movement to the left, biting a half covered second one into the mane while this takes his revenge by a bite into the forehand. Hurrying from the right the groom with the whip. Chalk and pencil drawing, the richly hatched attacking stallion additionally executed in black pen. (Before) 1781. 268 x 387 mm.
Stag of eight points, standing to the left. Pencil drawing. Inscribed: JW (ligated) inv. 17(81, pasted over by a side-strip) + (pasted over by a substrip) JGW (ligated) inv 1781. 230 x 184 mm.
Stag of ten points, standing from front left. Pen drawing. Inscribed: JGW (ligated) inv 1781 / JGW. (ligated) inv 1781 + (pasted over by an upper strip) “Nach Natur gezeichnet von JGWintter den 28 august ao. 1783” (Drawn from Nature by … ). 213 x 201 mm.
Three Drawings executed very finely on one Sheet , recto + verso. – Lower left red collector’s mark “G” in square (not in Lugt). – At the front seven points of previous corner mounting of the stag studies on the reverse, four of them still with vestiges of the grey-blue mounting paper. Only one of these spots though unessentially affecting the drawing by touching the groom’s foot. Lower centre below of the shadow hatching thin paper spot from almost imperceptibly removed eighth mounting point.
By Winter cut up vertically in about the centre by Wintter for the two backside stag studies. These two halves additionally – obviously for reason of proportion – shortened at the top and bottom resp. and mounted in an album. Assumedly Wintter himself removed them after 1783 (see below) and glued them together again with strips of laid paper, adding the missing parts, though not concerning the drawing of the horses, by strips from further studies – tops of antlers and torso of a stag lying beside a trunk from behind resp. One of the laid paper strips besides with the covered German inscription
“ Drawn from nature by JGWintter the 28 august ao. 1783 ”.
The differing arrangement of the replacement strips – upper left, lower right – proving the priority of the horse drawing. The use of further study sheets up to the mentioned strip with the inscription of 1783, a procedure barely chosen by a collector, also points to Wintter as rescuer of his own drawing. In such a manner yet not only
with respect to the horse scenery
full of the riches of movement & immediate power
but at the same time an unheard of uniquely charming proof
of the ups and downs of artistic work .
And while in the groom we meet again thematically the hunter likewise acting from the right in a bison hunt of 1785 with the provenance von Kühlmann and Schäfer sold here, so the technical condition of the sheet has a predecessor in “Mr. Blaeu makes maps with glue and scissors” (IMAGO MUNDI XVII, 1963, pp. 96 f. & folded plates). Since in 1635 this was behind the competitor Janssonius with both the maps of Rhine + Danube he hastily printed the respective rough parts of Rumold Mercator’s wallmap of Germany of 1590 passed to him, and then reworked these accordingly with scissors and glue. Used so only in the German edition of the atlas of that year a pair of these cimelies has been sold here in the ’60s.
Offer no. 28,951 / EUR 1480. / export price EUR 1406. (c. US$ 1913.) + shipping
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