Johann Elias Ridinger (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). The Hippocrene. The Horse’s or Muse’s Fountain at the Parnas or Helicon as column of water rising up like a dome. With fountain ornaments, here the overgrown arch of a grotto, dominated by the fountain’s and Muse’s horse Pegasus and populated by the nine Muses as the guardians of the spring as well as river gods as the equally mandatory attributes of the fountain. Etching + engraving. 34.9 x 28.7 cm.
Augsburg Art Collections, Exhibition Catalogue KUNSTREICH – Acquisitions 1990-2000, 2001, no. 101 with full-page + 4 detail ills.
One of six Roman numbered I/VI preferential prints in reddish black on ivory-coloured Hahnemühle paper. Besides there are ten ordinary prints in black numbered Arabic 1/10 on the same and toned Hahnemühle resp. and some Épreuves d’Éditeur from the not cleaned plate in partly additional colours and on further papers, all with the autograph signature of ridinger dealer lüder h. niemeyer together with the date of February 16th, 1998, as the master’s 300th birthday, and two remaining with the printer without signature. With the exception of the latter two all with comprehensive stamp to this edition on the back.
Undescribed composition, obviously dismissed by the master and uncovered here during cleaning on the back of the original printing plate for “The Evening of the Stags”, Thienemann 240, of the set of their “Four Times of Day”, thematically near, but autonomous to the group of “Fountains” Thienemann (878-881) called the “Mythological Pyramids”.
Mythological background of the time of interest here is the moment Pegasus “calmed the Helicon rising up to heaven by the ecstasy about the Muses’ songs with a beat of his hoof evoking by this the enchanting Fountain of the Muses Hippocrene” (Meyer’s Konversations-Lexikon, 4th ed.).
Just to the sides of the horse the Muse of Painting not designated for her own with the painter’s stick and palette along with brushes in her left, pressing a groundhigh slab to herself, and Thalia as later guardian of theater in general, here with the comic mask, but in her right. What in ideas leads to Hogarth’s last self-portrait as painter with palette + brush before the canvas, on which he paints the comic muse with the mask as personification of his artistic inspiration. See Hogarth Catalogue Zurich, 1983, p. 18 along with illustrations pp. 17 + 135, dating the oil on ca. 1757, followed by the copper-work published March 29, 1758. Thinkable that Ridinger knew the work, even maybe that he was informed directly from London about its theme (compare with Th. 1097: “ … communicated from London”), namely the combination of the contents of both muses, and let it flow into his “Hippokrene”. With the result that this were to be dated between this corner point and October 1763 as the latest other for the set of The Deer’s Four Times of Day.
On the same level outwards Aphrodite casting the horoscope and Clio as announcer of history. After two puttos holding bird-shaped gargoyles – two reptile-like ones at the bottom – follow the other five Muses partly bathing their feet. The two in front right may be Erato connected specially to erotic poetry, here standing without attributes, and Terpsichore responsible for dance + choir singing, but with plectrum only. Of the both on the left one with yardstick. In between on the water group of river gods.
Created by one of the greatest artists close to nature in fine nearness to Antoine Watteau’s drawings “Diana Temple” + “The Arbor”, both of about 1714 and corresponding with each other and engraved by Gabriel Huquier for the drawing part (1726) of the Recueil Jullienne. Whereby the different creation of the sides of the “Diana Temple” invited Huquier to work two etchings after this: the Diana and the Neptune Temple (Nagler, Huquier, 41 f.). As then plays of water are present also at the “Arbor”, whose two little water spillers Ridinger quotes in the said water spitting birds held by puttos.
Ridinger’s Hippocrene published here supposedly for the first time ever in an elitist-small worldwide edition. – To match the size of the three other plates of the set of “The Deer’s Four Times of Day” the composition might be shortened marginally a little. Besides printing was done with all necessary care for the stags’ scenery on the other side. A care that inevitably had been thought as dispensable in the other way round. Thus the Hippocrene is not quite virginal. Nevertheless an attractive object on the wall, too.
Offer-no. 13,279 / price on application
– – – – The Same in one of the ten copies in black numbered in Arabic.
Offer-no. 13,280 / price on application