Johann Elias Ridinger (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). (The Night.) / NOX. At the half opened yardgate the little violinist accompanied by an old man with gamba slung over his back. A young woman dreamily listening to the serenade at her window while two children are attentive followers. On the right small view of the partially cloud-covered moon above trees. Mezzotint. Inscribed: Ioh. El. Ridinger inv. et excud. Aug. Vind., otherwise as above. 16⅜ × 22 in (41.5 × 56 cm).

Thienemann + Schwarz 1200; Niemeyer, Ridinger Erlebnisse 1698-2020, 2021, p. 59; Silesian Ridinger collection at Boerner XXXIX, 1987 ( “Rare”, 1885 ! ).

Not in Weigel (1838/57) , Coppenrath (1889/90) , Reich auf Biehla (1894) , Hamminger (1895) + Helbing (1900) . – Watermark H G L. – Final sheet of the first set of the four times of day in genre scenes. – With quatrain in German-Latin parallel text.

As all Ridinger mezzotints extremely rare. The complete set is provable only in the collection of Alexander Count of Faber-Castell dissolved in 1958. Sheet 1 alone figured in 1912 with the attribute “Very rare” in the 2468-lot sale of a “Large print collection mostly from the possession of an old Leipsic book shop”, then in 1980 once here. Of the other sheets of the suite – thus the one here, too – nothing of that sort is known.

With surrounding paper margin of 10-13 mm. On the right a 4,5 cm long trace of scraping carefully retouched, a missing spot of about the size of a pinhead in the brickwork below the window blackened. The utterly smoothed centerfold doubled with thin paper. Otherwise of beautiful velvety blackness and fine chiaroscuro as always being especially remarkable with the mezzotints generally allowing only smallest editions of about “50 or 60 (sic!) clean copies, afterwards (the image) grinds itself off very soon as it does not go deep into the copper”, Sandrart 1675 ) and in the nightly scene here mediating the whole charm of the mild summer night. While the borrowing from Adriaen van Ostade – cf. Schnackenberg 225 (Bernt V [1980], 457) + 226/27 – imparts a quite different Ridinger — the Ridinger of the Netherlanders.

Offer no. 28,936 | price on application