Aha – Ridinger for the Advanced
Go on to read simply further even if you should think to belong not quite – yet – to the illustrious circle of one of the old school like Julius Hofmann, whom in 1922 the great Max Lehrs praised in the catalog foreword of his precious collection of Prints of all Schools of the 15th to the 19th Centuries – among them Ridinger’s Roe Herd Thienemann 194 and the Hessian Mirror Stag Th. 332 – with the words
“ He was a collector of the old school … He still believed in the importance of the states, of the pointed or rounded plate corners and gave lovely attention to graver slides, etching spots, polished edges, as it only produced the familiar consort with an old friend.
And an old friend the collection was to him all along. He didn’t know greater pleasure than to tackle a portfolio and to view tenderly sheet by sheet in still hours … May every (of these catalog) pearls come to the right place and help to promote and deepen the love and the appreciation there … ”
“It was the otter . Yes , the playful otter” Heinz Sielmann once jubilated. Analogously hereto for us here and today “Yes , the states and nothing than the states” giving all still hunt only the last spice. Really the last? Or but just only the still uncapped last? Still free of the cream bonnet of a crème de la crème , the Cru Exceptionnel of a PETRUS , that “Legend from Pomerol”? So it is.
“ Precious , rare and seldom ”
find their heightening in proof impressions before all states .
Namely in those uniques of the still becoming ,
the bursting being filled of the creative moment ,
blowing at us over the centuries , as if we would look directly over the master’s shoulder , would see ,
how he takes at hand
a waste sheet already printed in another manner ,
to use its free reverse
to early proof of a new work .
Would see , how he than reaches for the red chalk to mark those parts necessary to work on further. And than suddenly , here and today , to hold an offer in hands, as only seasoned addresses are able to make them :
Ruddle-marked Proof Discharge Print
from the still unfinished plate
on waste sheet with a mezzotint torso on the back
Johann Elias Ridinger (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). (How the boars are hounded in the open on the ball and forced with a full chase of hounds.) Etching with engraving as discharge print. Sheet size 25.3 x 34.2 cm.
Ad Thienemann + Schwarz 66x). – Verso upper detail of the mezzotint Annunciation Schwarz 1515. – Hardly remarkably cut within the slightly dingy white platemark. Diagonal fold mark in the left lower corner not visible in the just still touched tip of the subject.
Proof discharge print of the only generally complete picture
being still unfinished however in its hatching
and in such a manner with corresponding
ruddled marks by the master for working on
in all parts
and, of course, still before of all letter , too.
“ Because the effect of an engraving is not readable from the plate without further ado like that of a woodcut the artist is used to take proof impressions telling him how and where he has to work on further ”
(Jahn, Wörterbuch der Kunst, 5th ed., 1957, p. 395/II).
Such proofs documenting the running working process and even with also autograph help marks , yes, explicit waste character in respect of the back printed already in another way as mark of special earliness as lying before here are
of very greatest rareness .
Occasionally on the market and highly wanted as precious of old – so Th. 171 in Bavarian private collection or Weigel’s Art Catalog, pt. XV (1850), 17538, “very rare proof impressions before all letter” or so – by fastidious collectors as collection truffles already the ultimately closing states with only still missing letter. But how all the more then here!
Weigel ibid. 17536 could qualify as, however, possibly only approximately comparable since without hint at autograph addition aside from several further “Very rare discharge prints” 2 sheet “Lion and the Elk” as “Very rare, less finished impressions before all letter”. And Helbing’s 1900 Ridinger mammoth offer (cat. XXXIV) came up per 1408 with a proof copy of the Paradise set whose reverses shew as a spectaculum text to the set of the Fair Game being unused there. Baron von Gutmann however as the Ridinger collector in general (Schwarz Catalog) possessed only two proof impressions of origin, thereof Schwarz 93a before all letter, but without qualification as a discharge print, not to mention ruddled marks.
For definitive proof discharge prints with red chalk like the present one provable here alone the two ones to Th. 193/94 at Counts Faber-Castell (1958, no. 27). In such a way then
a cimelia of first and foremost quality for the graphic Ridinger œuvre .
in the sheet size of 24.8 x 33.3 cm, the trimming of the white platemark therewith three-sided a little more than above, the lower margin however – here then thus with the letter – in both cases 3 cm. The subject side not uncleanly time-toned, the back more foxstippled and with four small marginal backings made rather providently.
Offer no. 15,230 / sold
Don’t you hesitate to step nearer and to pay reverence to these fascinating cimelia of artistically creative processes also when you probably are yet less familiar with them in respect of their outstanding rarity. Aren’t we all in art always only on the way , always on the move to a daily new frontier , to deepen our knowledge and – our fulfilment of that “what washes the dust of the everyday off the soul” (Picasso) ? During those still hours in the collection as an always anew refreshing consorting with an old friend.
Advanced-continuations intended
in loose sequence
„ Danke für den wunderbaren (Ridinger-)Scan … der meine Argumentation zur Verwechslung in der Staffierung der Porzellane dokumentarisch bestens belegt. Darf ich um Ihre Zustimmung bitten, ihn in meiner Arbeit zeigen zu dürfen? “
(Herr J. R., 7. Juni 2004)