Rugendas, Georg Philipp II (1701 Augsburg 1774). Hunting Luck. Young hunter with his two hounds, propped over boar + hare laid down at the foot of a tree growing from a boulder. Sketched hilly landscape background with further tree. Pen + brush drawing in brown-black and grey resp. over occasional pencil, grey wash. Inscribed with the pen lower left below of the fine border, both in brown ink: G. P. Rug. Junior. invenit A1736. 252 x 188 mm.

On strong Jean Villedary laid paper (“IV ILLEDARY”), the paper mill in Angoulême prospering for 150 years as at the same time partner of Dutch mills where his IV/I V for instances appears as countermark to C & I HONIG (1730-1869; in Augsburg estimated by both Rugendas and Ridinger), but generally also abused as pirated brand like others standing for first qualities, too.

The in every detail typical signature probably somewhat paled, at the back below not shining through into the subject the diagonally set S-sequence of a child’s printing set with touch of an attempt of cure, otherwise perfectly fresh and mounted at the edges onto a cutout.

so Gode Krämer in the 1998 Augsburg Rugendas catalog (p. 45/II) on occasion of other works of the younger Georg Philipp, sensitively executed and with dainty wash, as representing the best of his drawings. “His strength lies in the careful, picturewise execution” (Krämer, op. cit., 46/I). Usually he worked after fatherly designs and those of third parties, especially also after Johann Heinrich Roos.

Present work seems to be based on a fatherly idea. So by the Brazilian Johann Moriz Rugendas (1802-1858) as the last one of the painter dynasty there exists a youthful detail lithograph “Killed Game” (cat. Augsburg 259 with ills.) with the source inscription “G. P. Rugendas 1709”. Its upper half shows a roe lying diagonally across a boar, both laid against the trunk of a tree, at what the present composition with boar/hare reminds. That model drawing, however, is “neither signed nor dated, so that the inscription of the lithograph must be based on family tradition”.

Present left-sided boulder-tree accessories in their turn refer to the left-sided part of the 1724 drawing in his own hand of a stag hunt executed in the same technique (no. 159 of the catalog with ills.). In the printed œuvre we encounter it on the right side in the mezzotint Teuscher 362 with the bull held down by two hounds of the 4-sheet set “Hunt and Killed Game”, likewise with hilly light background, while for the two boar hounds the one of T. 472 of a 4-sheet set of hounds could be referred to. As a whole though neither thought stag hunt nor present drawing find any correspondence in the own engraved work nor in that of the family.

They  are  works  sui  generis ,

the former annotated by Gode Krämer as “one of the freest and easiest drawings” of the younger Georg Philipp. And present one already excels just thematically. Motifs with the hunter and his hunting luck are generally rare. Here then as the sole content of the subject. From famous stable.

Without glass + frame
Offer no. 15,182  /  price on request

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