At the Beginning of a Decades-long Chain
The 16(?)-Year-Old Ridinger’s
Fully Valid Drawing of a Mule
Johann Elias Ridinger (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). Mule from Front. With long bells & feed bag, packed evenly on both sides with covered baggage. Red chalk. Inscribed: 1718(4?). 203 x 148 mm.
On buff laid paper. – Of perfect preservation irrespective of a small unfounded backing between the forelegs.
Work documenting the master’s from his youth on long breath
from 1718 the latest, rather supposedly from already 1714 as the then 16-year-old though. For the 8 of the date, smaller than the other figures, is oblique and open above and in such a manner to be related to the representation of half eight values. By hook or crook it belongs to the
prelude
of the drawn œuvre .
For the drawing of a stag of 10 points on a hill opposite to a higher hill grown with two firs and full sun above right in black chalk and inscribed “Johan Elias, 7 (years)” discovered by Timm Luckhardt does not yet go beyond a child’s work irrespective of two remarkably seen birds of prey in the sky.
His début in serious drawings Ridinger had made at the age of 12 years at the latest . So per collective number 6 – “10 sheet. Different Horses. Earliest (inscribed sanguine) works (in quarto) from 1710 till 1717” – of the Fine Collection of Drawings and Engravings of Joh. El. Ridinger from the Property of a well-known Collector at Wawra in Vienna 1890. 1717 earliest date, too, in the 305-sheet collection of “Studies, Contours and executed Drawings” as item 318 of the Ridinger-Appendix of the 1869 Weigel Catalog of his left Drawings.
Through the decades Ridinger has turned his attention again and again to the professionally packed mule and horse, why, even the stag (Fable XVIII, Th. 782). However, there is
All other thematically related sheets are lateral views or yet seen laterally, even if the designation implies a view “from front” as with the Mule in Full Dress from Front (Th. 507) from the seventh part published 1754 of the 126-sheet set Design of Several Animals.
Present drawing created 40 years before
therefore was spiritus rector
without having been reproduced itself !
And in its documentory value a not at all to be overestimated
CORNER POINT OF RIDINGER’S DRAWN ŒUVRE .
Enjoying in its youthful freshness at the same time the eyes . In the chest now and then , at shadowy wall permanently . By hook or crook a preciousness for the collection .
Offer no. 15,527 / price on request