From Old French Ridinger Collection with an Edge
The Four Seasons of the Hounds
The Set with the Hidden Self-portrait
As hitherto missed
Ridinger, Johann Elias (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). The Four Seasons of the Hounds. Set of 4 sheet in etching with engraving. Supposedly beginning of the 1740s. Inscribed: avec privil. de Sa Maj. Imp. / J. E. Ridinger inv. peint grave(è) et excud à(a) augs(Augs)., otherwise with sheet title & quatrain in German-French parallel text. 18¼-18⅜ × 13¾ in (46.5-46.8 × 34.8-34.9 cm).
Thienemann & Schwarz 105-108; Nagler 25; Catalog Weigel sects. XIX (1847!!), 16545 (collective no., old now only scarcely occurring impressions) & XXVIII (1857), Ridinger-Appendix, 10 A (Old impressions on laid paper, followed by B as New impressions); Silesian Ridinger collection at Boerner XXXIX, 1793 ( “Rare”, 1885! ); Reich auf Biehla 18 ( “Rare”, 1894! ); Gg. Hamminger collection 1542 ( “Rare set”, 1895! ); Helbing XXXIV (Arbeiten von J. E. u. M. E. Ridinger, 1900), 251 (Th. 106 in later impression) & 252 (trimmed up to the subject); Schwerdt III, 136; Blüchel, Die Jagd (1996) II, 78 f. (ills. Th. 105 & 108). – Coppenrath (1889/90) merely had the Spring sheet only.
The in every aspect splendid copy
of this in old impressions always scarce pictorial marvelous set
on unfolded laid paper with not sufficiently legible typographic and crown detail watermarks in at least two sheet, yet likely the heavy WANGEN laid paper of the Loth dynasty of the Lotten mill in Nieder-Wangen on the Argen preferred by the Ridingers. Side edges 1⅜-2¼ in (3.4-5.7 cm) wide, above/below 2⅛-3⅞ in (5.4-9.9 cm), resulting in a sheet size of 24½ × 17¼ in (62.1-62.3 × 43.7-43.8 cm) and thus slightly surpassing Schwerdt’s copy (23⅝ × 16¾ in [60 × 42.5 cm]).
In such a manner having been embedded – see above remaining guards – in others like it. Right up to
the superior printing quality fully playing off its chiaroscuro,
freshness and, indeed, unfolded state!
What perforce is tantamount to an original supply source.
And just as with previous top items of prime addresses presenting themselves uniformly the Ridingers themselves had to be targeted as assured, so with present one everything suggests their Paris agent, the art dealer Gilles Rosselin.
The Spring. / Le Printems.
“ The hares are catched a lot at spring time, / Before when they have moved into the seeded field: / But when with greatest rage the hounds set on it, / So the protector has concern they do not tear it up. ”
Sitting over the hare he especially has to make himself respected by two of the four. “The spring sheet of the set of seasons by Ridinger shows the low hunt for hares” (Blüchel). The painterly preparatory drawing in reverse furnished with marks of trace and red chalk on the back available here. See illustrations of this and the print in Jan Hendrik Niemeyer, Ridinger Erlebnisse 1698-2020, 2021, p. 59.
The Summer. / L’Ete.
(below “No. VII.”, as also with Schwarz)
“ In summer in the stout often the stag is bagged, / By the par force hounds which are ordered to this, / And when it is killed then that it stretches all legs, / The hunter tired there enjoys a pipe tobacco. ”
“ A rich sheet. Scene in the wood. Quite in front lies a very long rifle, above of it the bagged (stag of twelve points). A striped hound puts his fore paws on it and looks … at his master … Besides we see five other hounds in different positions ” (Th.).
The Autumn. / L’Automne.
“ Because for heron hawking the autumn is the best time, / The falconer also gets set and ready, / And keeps ready for this upshot for time and hour, / The search just as grey, water spaniel hound. ”
“ An even richer sheet. A falconer … holds with the left [recte right] a feed before the falcon sitting on the right [recte left]. Five hounds stand around him … and would like to get something, too. Another (hooded) falcon looks at the birds below it, among which a grey heron, a wild goose, a teal and others ” (Th.).
The Winter. / L’Hiver.
“ In winter the bear has the greatest risk, / For at such time his fur is of very fine hair, / The Pole chases him on all sides, / But the mastiff serves the best for it. ”
“ Three mastiffs have killed a bear, but we see what strain it did to them … There a Pole with the spike shows above. He seems to have gained a little from the physiognomy of the bear biters and looks at the killed bag ” (Th.).
“Ridinger recommends in winter the bear hunt with the mastiff as practiced by the Poles” (Blüchel).
And here then the recommendation not “to give the slip” to this fine trouvaille. For, Ridinger once more,
“ The care of the hounds let be highly recommended to you … ”
So below the title vignette of The Fair Game Hounded by the Different Kinds of Hounds, Th. 139-160, currently available here in a truffled and also otherwise absolute exception copy.
At top each both the two tiny holes of the original stitching. From this time, too, the entirely negligible dust mark of three far edges of the Spring. The Summer sheet with inward decreasing and optically little conspicuous crease of ¾-2 × 6¾ in [2-5 × 17 cm) in the right white lower margin, initially providently backed acid-freely. Otherwise of aforesaid perfect state.
Offer no. 16,313 | price on application