DeutschReflecting the annual flights
on the Thuringia (Crane’s Field) – (Rhine-)Hesse – Route
BURGMANN HENNE KRANICH of DIRMSTEIN’S
strong House Kranichstein near Darmstadt
from the beginning accompanying
the line of the Hesse-Darmstadt Landgraves
Ridinger, Martin Elias (1730 Augsburg 1780). This Stag of 3 Antlers was hunted par force by His Princely Highness the Ruling Landgrave LOUIS VIII of Hesse-Darmstadt
in the Great Pheasantry near Cranichstein
(Crane’s Rock) Aug. 11, 1753, where the same set above a wall 12 shoe high and escaped, but was shot after the rutting season of the very same year at the border in high counts’ Erbach Schönberg area. Etching with engraving after Georg Adam Eger (Murrhardt 1727 – 1808). (1767/68.) Inscribed: G. A. Eger delineav. et pinxit. / M. El. Ridinger sculps. Aug. Vindel., otherwise in German as above. 37 x 24.9 cm.
With not just exact local architecture as generally only here and there with Ridinger, but even more before the scenery of hunting seat
KRANICHSTEIN
as one of the first of its views .
The building itself together important for the history of construction:
“ The construction of the castle in – here well visible – three wings is an early,
if not even the first example of this style ,
which later has been taken over at other castles, too ”
(Lohmann, Georg I. und die Anfänge von Jagdschloß Kranichstein, no year, p. 70, after Dehio, Handbuch der dt. Kunstdenkmäler, vol. Hesse, 1982, p. 518).
The famous stag of three antlers as sheet 97 (Thienemann + Schwarz 339; Ridinger Catalogue Darmstadt, 1999, VI.10 with illustration on front cover + page 126; Siebert-Weitz, Ridinger, 1999, pp. 44 f. with ills.) of the “Representation of the Wondrous Stags and other Animals”. – At which not only after realization here the consequence of the eldest, Martin Elias, as the etcher/engraver of the plate here being up for the Ridinger œuvre is much larger than that of an engaged co-worker only. Already at an age of thirty he just acted as a spiritus rector behind the backstage ensuring that sets were completed as just also the monumental 101-sheet one of the “Wondrous Stags” to which the plate here belongs, too. Of the last 27 works Martin Elias conveyed to the printing-plates alone 21! Without him the plate offered to you here would not be in existence!
And as Wolf Stubbe (Joh. El. Ridinger, Hbg./Bln. 1966, pp. 16 f. + pl. 34), going in medias res, celebrates Th. 722, The Wild Bison and the Crocodile, from the Fights of Killing Animals as an artistic zenith of the late work in respect of its luminous efficiency, he pays tribute together, because judging by the plate, not the drawing, to Martin Elias as the etcher/engraver of that work. An aspect illustrating deeply the Ridinger team-work. – The original numbering “97” restored again on occasion of a later 19th century edition after it had been changed for a separate set in the mid-twenties.
Already depicted in the hunting diary of Louis VIII the stag of 10 points (2 x 3, 1 x 4) poses
in front of the Kranichstein pool and the complex of the palace .
In regard of the latter one of its first depictions though. Since
“ Views of the hunting palace are handed down since the middle of the 18th century only, all from the time of landgrave Louis VIII who as passionate hunter kept court almost exclusively in Kranichstein, as his father Ernest Louis also did after … 1715. Kranichstein’s heyday falls under the regency of these princes ”
(Gisela Siebert, Kranichstein, 1969, page 14).
Yet even going visibly beyond this general documentary value as still
“ with all the buildings of its immediate environs
which had been removed at end of the (19th) century at the latest ”
(Wolfgang Weitz).
And taken from no lesser, though not preserved in Kranichstein (see, however, besides the trophy there, VI.10c of the Catalogue Darmstadt with illustration, Eger’s large portrait painting of the stag, VI.10a, and the drawn study of the head ascribed to Eger, VI.10b with ills.), design than that by of the court hunting painter who joined the court in 1748, and in whom the close connection to the Ridingers obviously originated, and due to the age preferably lasted with Martin Elias. Because 6 of the 12 plates of the “Wondrous” dedicated to Hesse-Darmstadt (10 of these to Louis VIII personally) plus Th. 356 + 385 as also referring to Louis and later taken over from the “Incidents” have been worked by Martin Elias, four of these after Eger. Beyond these after the latter the equestrian portrait of Louis from the “Princely Persons” and two further designs.
Just as Eger was
“the true painter of the par force hunt at Kranichstein …
Louis VIII must have esteemed (him) quite a lot, wished to have him as constant companion on the hunt and commissioned him with a court hunting uniform to put him on par with the hunters, also called him intimately ‘his old mate’ (and bestowed him with the title of a second court painter after the death of Joh. Chr. Fiedler in 1765) ”
(Siebert, op. cit., pages 63 + 109).
“Hunting landgrave” Louis VIII himself together with Hesse-Darmstadt generally not just form the by far largest individual block within the “Wondrous”, but in the whole graphic work at all. And in this context the plate here with its Kranichstein architecture is
the most dominant plate of the Hesse-Darmstadt-block .
Ref. no. 14,997 / in stock – not catalogued / request description & offer