LANDSCAPE AND HISTORY

PETER VON CORNELIUS
1783 Düsseldorf - Berlin 1867

St. John Preaching    ca. 1810

pen and black ink over pencil on wove paper
291 × 435 mm (11 7/16 × 17 2/16 inches)

PROVENANCE
Stephan Seelinger, Munich
sale, Galerie Bassenge, Berlin, November 27, 2009, lot 6310
private collection, USA

EXHIBITION
Zeitgeist: Art in the Germanic World 1800–1900, exhibition check list, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles 2015, no. 28

Prof. Dr. Frank Büttner was the first to attribute the drawing to Cornelius (letter from January 15, 1986). According to him it is most likely an independent work that was not done in preparation for a print or painting and remarks that there are other examples of similar drawings especially in Cornelius’s early oeuvre. As for the dating of the sheet, Büttner refers to two other drawings in the Stadtmuseum in Munich that both also show biblical subjects – Jacob’s Blessing and Christ with the Children – and are dated 1809 (Maillinger II/2041 and 2042).

CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH
1774 Greifswald – Dresden 1840

View towards Cape Arkona, Rügen   ca. 1803

pencil, pen and brush in brown
413 × 619 mm (16 ¼ × 24 3/8 inches)

Börsch-Supan/Jähnig, p. 272, no. 95; Grummt, vol. 1, pp. 371f., no. 373

PROVENANCE
Johann Gottfried Quistorp, Greifswald
probably 1828 to Dr. Friedrich Quistorp, Greifswald
by decent in the 1920s to Dr. Leo Becker, Neidenburg
Jobst Kühne, Neumünster
private collection, Germany
sale, Hauswedell & Nolte, Hamburg, December 8, 2001, lot 600
Jan Krugier, Geneva
sale, Sotheby’s, London, February 6, 2014, lot 155
private collection, USA

EXHIBITED
La Passion du Dessin. Collection Jan et Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, exhibition catalogue Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris 2002, no. 77
Caspar David Friedrich. Die Erfindung der Romantik, ed. by Hubertus Gaßner, exhibition catalogue Museum Folkwang Essen and Hamburger Kunsthalle, 2006/2007, München 2006, pp. 368f, illustrated p. 181
Das ewige Auge. Von Rembrandt bis Picasso. Meisterwerke aus der Sammlung Jan Krugier und Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, ed. by Christiane Lange and Roger Diederen, exhibition catalogue Hypo-Kulturstiftung München, Munich 2007, p. 158, no. 71
Zeitgeist: Art in the Germanic World 1800–1900, exhibition check list, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles 2015, no. 34

The view shows the chalk cliffs of Cape Arcona, the northern most part of the island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea. It is seen from the beach of Vitten looking north. The moon rises above the water at right; the foreground shows fishing nets hung up to dry.

A very similar scene is depicted in a sepia drawing in the Kunsthalle Hamburg (Börsch-Supan/Jähnig, 96; Grummt 375). A third version is documented by 1816 among the six views of Rügen in the collection of Prince Malte von Putbus on Rügen (B-S/J 98; G 374). The latter, together with two other views of Rügen by Friedrich in Prince Putbus’s collection, served as model for three aquatint etchings by Carl Friedrich Thiele that were published, most likely initiated by the Putbus court, as part of the portfolio Malerische Reise durch Rügen (August Rückert, Berlin 1821).

The whereabouts of the drawing was not known to Helmut Börsch-Supan when he published his seminal catalogue raisonné in 1973. It appeared on the market only in 2001 when it was acquired by the Geneva gallerist and collector Jan Krugier.

CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH
1774 Greifswald – Dresden 1840

Study of Pine Trees   1813

pencil; 182 × 117 mm (7 3/16 × 4 10/16 inches)

annotated at left Tannen / Mittelgrund / von unten, dated at right den 26 juni / 1813

Grummt, vol. 2, p. 913, no. 1008

PROVENANCE
private collection, Belgium
Katrin Bellinger Kunsthandel, Munich
private collection, USA

LITERATURE
Christina Grummt, Caspar David Friedrich. Die Zeichnungen. Das gesamte Werk, Munich 2011, p. 913, no. 1008 (ill.)

EXHIBITION
Zeitgeist: Art in the Germanic World 1800–1900, exhibition check list, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles 2015, no. 31

This previously unknown drawing was discovered in an album with a group of other, contemporaneous drawings, in a Belgian private collection around 2010. Christina Grummt was therefore able to include it in the appendix of her catalogue raisonné which was published in 2011. She rightly suggests that it was originally part of a sketchbook used by Friedrich between June 1, 1813, and May 7, 1815. Grummt was the first to undertake a reconstruction of this “Krippener Skizzenbuch,” named after the eponymous village on the Elbe river near the then-popular spa town of Bad Schandau. Friedrich stayed there as a guest of his friend Friedrich Gotthelf Kummer during the occupation of Dresden by Napoleonic troops. The war had caused an artistic crisis and Friedrich annotates the first drawing he made this summer on June 1, 1813 (Grummt 679) as being the first made in a long time (nach langer Zeit das erste / gezeichnete).

We don’t know when the sketchbook was broken up. Other sheets that can be associated with it are in collections in Dresden, Essen, Oslo, and Vienna as well as some in private collections (cf. Grummt 679–700 as well as this drawing). It is noticeable that no less than eight drawings from this group bear the note von unten (from below), a mental note by the artist that the trees were seen sotto in su.

CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH
1774 Greifswald – Dresden 1840

Morgennebel (Morning Fog) – Bohemian Landscape   May 16, 1828

watercolor with pen and grey ink over pencil on wove paper
128 x 205 mm (5 1/16 x 8 1/8 inches)

dated in pen and grey ink at lower left den 16t Maij 1828 and titled at lower right Morgennebel

PROVENANCE
private collection, Düsseldorf (when first seen by C.G. Boerner in 1981); by descent to
private collection, Chemnitz

LITERATURE
cf. Christina Grummt, Caspar David Friedrich. Die Zeichnungen. Das gesamte Werk, Munich 2011, cf. nos. 899–912, 928–932

This newly discovered watercolor belongs to a group of sixteen works (fifteen watercolors and one pen drawing) that Friedrich created during a short trip to Northern Bohemia he undertook together with his friend August Philipp Clara in May 1828. When the two travelers arrived in Teplitz around May 7, they noted in the guestbook of the inn they were staying at that the purpose of their trip was a Kunstreise, zufus (probably best translated as “art hike, on foot”). Using Teplitz as their base, they ventured into the surrounding countryside.

The watercolor’s composition displays a remarkable degree of abstraction. The foreground is dominated by four horizontal bands of color that gradually recede toward the back. The middle ground is accentuated by a Bildstock (roadside cross), a recurring motif in landscapes by German Romantic artists. Beyond this marker, the landscape opens up to a range of hills in the far distance. Friedrich often dated his drawings very precisely, but the added annotation, Morgennebel (morning fog or mist), is highly unusual. Within the context of the creation of the sheet—first as a faithful rendering of a topographical view—Morgennebel can be read as a technical annotation, not unlike some of the color notes that Friedrich would add to many of his pencil drawings. The annotation is meant as a reminder of the time of day as well as the weather phenomenon at the moment of the drawing’s execution.

CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH
1774 Greifswald – Dresden 1840

Woman with a Shawl   1804

pen, ink and wash on wove WHATMAN paper
165 × 100 mm (6 ½ × 4 inches)
dated in pen and ink den 3t Februar and further inscribed Juliana Krey. 1804

Grummt, vol. 1, p. 397, no. 413

PROVENANCE
Harald Friedrich, Hannover (until 1916)
Max Silberberg, Breslau (until 1939)
Stiftung Pommern, Kiel; restituted to the heirs after Max Silberberg in 1999
sale, Sotheby’s, London, November 20, 2013, lot 60
private collection, USA

LITERATURE
Marianne Bernhard, Caspar David Friedrich. Das gesamte graphische Werk, Munich 1974,
p. 363, illustrated
Helmut Börsch-Supan, Zeichnungen und Aquarelle deutscher Meister 1750–1900. Aus der Sammlung der Stiftung Pommern, Kiel 1978–79, pp. 61f., illustrated
Hans Dickel, Caspar David Friedrich in seiner Zeit. Zeichnungen der Romantik und des Biedermeier, Weinheim 1991, p. 28
Hermann Zschoche, Caspar David Friedrich auf Rügen, Amsterdam/Dresden 1998, p. 25

EXHIBITED
Caspar David Friedrich und sein Kreis. Gemälde und Graphik aus öffentlichen Sammlungen in Schleswig-Holstein, exhibition catalogue, Stiftung Pommern, Kiel 1975, no. 31
Zeichnungen und Aquarelle deutscher Meister 1750 bis 1900. Aus den Sammlungen der Stiftung Pommern, exhibition catalogue Stiftung Pommern Kiel and Museum der Hansestadt Greifswald, 1991, no. 56

This carefully executed pen-and-ink drawing relates to a group of similarly composed sheets that belong to the so-called “Small Mannheim Sketchbook” of 1802–04. First suggested by Helmut Börsch-Supan, Christina Grummt, the author of the catalogue raisonné, doubts this association. Given a lack of alternative suggestions, it is nonetheless worth pointing to the strong compositional parallels between the Mannheim drawings and our sheet. Many show figures either in a landscape or in an interior. Some of these settings are more resolved, others only hinted at, as here. In all of them, the drawings fill only the upper three quarters of the sheets, with the lower register left empty. There are even thematic parallels: A drawing from October 5, 1801, shows a woman in mourning. The mood in our drawing is not dissimilar. The woman’s eyes are downcast – she, too, could be mourning.

Created 1804 and hence two years after the last of the Mannheim drawings, the stylistic differences in our drawings are noticeable. First and foremost, it displays a graphic precision missing in the earlier works. Here, Friedrich uses fine pen lines to define the contour of the figure as well as the elaborate decorative border of the shawl. Unprecedented is also the fact that Friedrich added a name in the lower margin. Could “Juliana Krey” have been the model for this drawing?

Weighing both parallels and differences between the Mannheim drawings and ours against each other, it is probably safe to say that the latter belongs to a new, somewhat later phase of Friedrich’s oeuvre whose larger context still needs to be further investigated.

JOSEPH RITTER VON FÜHRICH
1800 Kratzau (now Chrastava, Czechia) – Vienna 1876

Portrait of the Artist’s Mother    ca. 1825–27

pencil on wove paper
227 x 129 mm

annotated on the verso by the artist’s granddaughter: Dieses Portrait der Mutter des Künstlers / stammt aus dem Nachlass / Josef von Führich / Anny Ritting von Führich / dessen Enkelin

PROVENANCE
the artist’s estate
Erika Pohl Ströher (1919–2016), Darmstadt, later Switzerland
sale, Galerie Bassenge, Berlin, November 27, 2020, lot 6795
private collection, USA

In his memoirs, Führich describes his mother as “a quiet, mellow, and constantly active woman.” The words convey love as well as respect, and both are echoed in this carefully executed drawing in which the artist tenderly captures the plainness of her face yet also lavishly adorns it with a headdress and ruffled collar. Johanna Josefa Reilich married the painter Wenzel Ambros Führich in September 1798. Joseph, her oldest son, and Maria Anna Antonia, born 1811, were the only two of twelve children to reach adulthood.

A drawing in the Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg shows Führich’s father Wenzel and must have clearly been conceived as a pendant. The shoulder-length figure is similarly proportioned and turned to the right. Foregoing all adornment, the focus here is solely on the sitter’s face. Both drawings are annotated by Führich’s granddaughter Anny on the verso, stating that they came from the artist’s estate. Clearly treasuring them as mementos, he kept them throughout his life.

The drawings were most likely created in the mid-1820s, shortly before Führich left for Italy in 1827. Their linear precision can be compared with his famous portraits of the Massimi family, created soon after his arrival in Rome in 1828 (now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). Seen together, these works confirm Jens Christian Jensen’s remark that “Führich’s portrait drawings from the 1820s and 1830s count among the most beautiful examples of Romantic portraiture.”

JOSEPH VON FÜHRICH
1800 Kratzau – Vienna 1876

The Artist Adolf Gottlieb Zimmermann    ca. 1827–29

pencil on laid paper
172 x 104 mm (6 13/16 x 4 1/16 inches)

annotated by the artist along the top margin Der Tirann

PROVENANCE
Kurt Gerstenberg (1886 Chemnitz−Würzburg 1968)
Stephan Seeliger (1929 Leipzig–Munich 2020)

The drawing was probably part of a now-disassembled sketchbook Führich used during his trip to Italy in 1827–29.

Führich and Zimmermann (1799 Lodenau–Wrocław [Breslau] 1856) met in Rome where Führich had arrived in January of 1827. Zimmermann came to Rome after receiving a stipend from the academy in Dresden in late 1825. After some of Führich’s friends, among them Adalbert Waagen and Johann Carl Schulz, left Rome during the summer of 1818, a closer friendship developed between Führich and Zimmermann. They went on regular walks and were regulars at the Caffè Greco. Since Zimmermann came from Lodenau near Görlitz in the Lausitz region in Germany’s east, which is only forty miles from Führich’s birthplace Kratzau, both enjoyed talking in the German dialect they shared.

The inscription “Tirann” (tyrant) refers to the nickname Führich had given Zimmermann, apparently alluding to the latter’s somewhat dominant manner. That this is clearly meant as a playful tease is proven by a portrait that Zimmermann drew of Führich which he annotated as being made “by his [Führich’s] friend Adolph Zimmermann the tyrant in Rome.”

Führich studied in Prague. During his time in Rome, his contact with Joseph Anton Koch and the circle of Nazarene artists around Friedrich Overbeck proved formative for his own work. He became an official member of the Nazarene Brotherhood and completed the fresco cycle illustrating Tasso’s Gerusaleme Liberata in Rome’s Villa Giustiniani Massimo (also known as Villa Massimo Lancellotti). Führich briefly returned to Prague before becoming curator at the gallery of the Vienna Academy, where he also taught from 1840 onward. He is one of the leading exponents of late Romanticism in Vienna.

Zimmermann was an exponent of the late-Nazarene style in the tradition of Wilhelm von Schadow and would later create the majority of his work for the archbishop of Breslau in Silesia (now Wrocław, Poland).

FRANZ GOLDMANN
ca. 1783/84 or 1786 – Vienna – 1848

The Holy Family    1812

lithograph with touches of heightening
561 x 722 mm (ca 22 x 28 ½ inches)

Schwarz (Goldmann) 1 third (final) state

PROVENANCE
possibly Franz Ritter von Hauslab, Vienna (not stamped; cf. Lugt 1247)
Princes of Liechtenstein (not stamped, but still attached to the Liechtenstein album sheet; cf. Lugt 4398)

This monumental lithograph is arguably one of the most accomplished works printed in the Viennese lithography studio of Philipp von Phillisdorf, founded only the previous year.

Only very little is known about the print designer Franz Goldmann. After studying at the academy in Vienna, he was apparently working as a history painting before turning mainly to art dealing during his later years. In the detailed inscription that accompanies the image, he refers to himself as “imperial academic history painter” and dedicates the lithograph to a certain economic council Ratanowsky who was most likely a patron, described here as “connoisseur and appreciator of the visual arts, encourager of budding talents, and supporter of things good and useful.”

The print itself is technical complex, due to both its size as well as the fact that image and text were printed from two separate stones which needed to be precisely aligned.

FRANZ THEOBALD HORNY
1798 Weimar – Olevano 1824

Landscape near Olevano    ca. 1822

pen in grey over pencil
235 × 258 mm (9 4/16 × 10 3/16 inches)

with faint pencil inscriptions by the artist in the upper margin and in the center; annotated in pencil by a later hand, probably during the inventory of the estate F. Horny

PROVENANCE
Eugen Roth, Munich
sale, Villa Grisebach Auktionen, Berlin, June 1, 2016, lot 110
private collection, USA

Like such other important German Romantic artists as Karl Philipp Fohr (1795–1818) and Philipp Otto Runge (1777–1810), Horny died young. While Fohr drowned swimming in the Tiber, Horny, like Runge, died of tuberculosis. What survives, therefore, is a Frühwerk, the early oeuvre of a promising young artist who was still finding his own style. Most of it is also mainly the work of a draftsman, and the majority of these are today kept in public collections, the largest part of it at the Klassik Stiftung Weimar.

Horny’s talent was recognized early on by Carl Friedrich Rumohr who invited the shy young man to join him on his trip to Italy. They left Weimar in the spring of August of 1816 and, after spending three months in Munich, arrived in Florenz in December. Horny went on to Rome by himself, arriving there on the last day of the year. In Rome, Horny studied with Joseph Anton Koch who remained an important mentor for the young artist. Horny remained undecided about the main themes of his art, torn between the retrospective style of the Nazarene artists and the more realistic tendencies prevalent beyond their circle. He also wavered between the genres of landscape and history yet ultimately settled on landscape during the remaining years of his life. Hinrich Sieveking, arguably one of the best experts on the artist, characterizes his oeuvre as situated between “moments of awkwardness and those of creative genius.”

Horny’s landscape drawings are always developed from the center outward, with the sides appearing more loose and more unresolved. He often introduced vertical and horizontal lines to reframe his views, especially the wide panoramas that surrounded him in the environs of Olevano. Sometimes, as here, he even cut his drawings to create a more balanced and focused composition, a technique that was also employed by his teacher Rumohr. The fact that we can still read the inscription of the artist’s name at lower right makes it most likely that it was the artist himself who had trimmed the sheet to its present format (a closely related drawing in Weimar shows the same unusual and nearly square shape).

HERMANN KERSTING
1825 Meissen – Dresden 1850

Portrait of the Artist’s Sister Agnes    1848

pencil on light-brown wove paper with white heightening
160 x 140 mm (6 5/16 x 5 1/2 inches)

signed and dated in pencil at lower right H Kersting / d. 1/3 48

PROVENANCE
sale, Gerd Rosen, May 1958
Dr. Rolf Renker (Papierfabrik Zerkall Renker & Söhne), Düren;
thence by descent

Agnes Kersting was born October 14, 1828, and died before not even twenty-years old on March 13, 1848. Our drawing is dated March first and was therefore executed only very shortly before her premature death. There also exists a painting in a private collection which shows the same sitter with her head turned in the opposite direction.

The oeuvre of Hermann Kersting, who was the son of the more famous Georg Friedrich (1785 Güstrow–Meissen 1847), is not very well researched and there are very few works known that are both signed and dated, making this moving portrait a significant addition.

FRANZ KOBELL
1749 Mannheim – Munich 1822

Rocky Landscape with Storm Approaching

pencil and brush with brown ink
225 x 180 mm (9 x 7 inches)

PROVENANCE
private collection, Belgium
Kunsthandel Katrin Bellinger, Munich
private collection, USA

LITERATURE
Thomas Herbig, Franz Kobell. Ein Landschaftszeichner um 1800. Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Radierungen, exhibition catalog, Städtische Galerie Traunstein/Kunstverein Reutlingen, Traunstein 1997
Bärbel Kopplin, Die Künstlerfamilie Kobell. Von Mannheim nach München, exhibition catalog Reiss-Engelhorn-Museum Manneim/Bayerische Vereinsbank München, Munich 1993

The drawing was part of an album with a group of other, contemporaneous drawings, including two by Caspar David Friedrich, that surfaced in a private Belgian collection around 2010.

Franz Kobell was the younger brother of Ferdinand (1740–1799). Although not destined to become an artist, he drew from a young age. Both brothers supported and encouraged each other in their artistic endeavours. As many artists at the time, Franz first looked at Dutch landscapes from the seventeenth century as models for his own work. He received a scholarship from his sovereign Carl Theodor von der Pfalz that allowed him to travel to Italy from 1779 to 1784. After his return, he settled in Munich where Carl Theodor had by then moved the court from Mannheim. He and his brother became pioneers for a new landscape art. Leaving earlier models behind, both now went out to draw directly from nature in quick and spontaneous sketches. Yet Franz also continued to create more finished, ideal landscapes, often in the style of Claude Lorrain (1600–1682) whose art he had encountered in Italy.

The present, highly finished drawing is a representative example for the latter aspect of Franz’s work as a draftsman. It reflects the ideal of the heroic landscape but also incorporates elements of the sublime. The composition is dominated by a mountain range that fills more than half of the sheet. To the right, the viewer opens into the distance, looking toward the ruins of a castle with mighty round towers sitting on a plain. Above, one notices the build-up of a dark and cloudy sky from which rain begins to fall. Wind appears to sweep across the landscape, its effects visualized through two small staffage figures in the foreground who are trying to escape the oncoming storm.

FRIEDRICH OLIVIER
1791 – Dessau – 1859

The Good Samaritan    1835

pencil on wove paper; the framing lines added in pen and ink
image: 138 x 108 mm (5 7/16 x 4 ¼ inches)

inscribed below the image: Luc. 10,30.34.

PROVENANCE
Von Bethmann-Hollweg family, Castle Rheineck (where one of Friedrich Olivier’s sons was educated)
Carl Heumann, Chemnitz (Lugt 2841a);
his sale, Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett Roman Norbert Ketterer, Stuttgart, November 29, 1957, lot 239 (with illustration on plate 11).
private collection, USA

LITERATURE
Zeichenkunst der deutschen Romantik, exhibition, Nassauisches Landesmuseum, Wiesbaden 1937, no. 32
Ludwig Grote, Die Brüder Olivier und die deutsche Romantik, Berlin 1938, pp. 353–357, ill. on p. 356
Stephan Seeliger et al., Unter Glas und Rahmen. Druckgraphik der Romantik aus den Beständen des Landesmuseum Mainz und aus Privatbesitz, exhibition catalogue Landesmuseum Mainz, 1993, pp. 68–70

During his time in Italy from 1818 to 1823, Friedrich Olivier was part of the Lukasbund, a group of German artists that later became known as the “Nazarenes.” Among them, the creation of an illustrated Bible was intensively discussed. After Olivier’s return to Vienna to join his brother Ferdinand, he worked intensely on this project and was indeed the first of the Nazarenes to complete such an undertaking in 1836/37, more than a decade before Cotta’s
Die Bibel oder die Heilige Schrift des Alten u. Neuen Testaments … Mit Holzschnitten nach Zeichnungen der ersten Künstler Deutschlands of 1850. The last issues of the most comprehensive of the German illustrated Bible projects of the period, Schnorr von Carolsfeld Bibel in Bildern, did not appear until the end of 1860.

Olivier originally plan was to have his drawings reproduced as lithographs but ultimately followed Friedrich Overbeck’s advice choosing the engraving technique instead. Several engravers became part of the project, among them Heinrich Merz and Julius Thaeter, the latter arguable one of the most gifted practitioners in this technique at the time. The first issue, consisting of of ten sheets on the Infancy of Jesus was published by the artist himself, received with praise in the Kunst-Blatt in March 1835. Further issues followed successively in quick succession until the last ten sheets appeared in 1837. The Hamburg publisher Friedrich Perthes would then backdate the first complete edition of the Bible to 1836. Contrary to what the title – Volks-Bilder-Bibel (People’s Picture Bible) – might suggest, the 50 prints solely illustrate the New Testament. They are also not accompanied by the Biblical text but by observations written by Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert (1780–1860), at the time a highly popular and influential physician and naturalist who in his writings aimed for a religiously-grounded interpretation of the cosmos. Schubert advocated a erweckliches Christentum (“awakened Christianity”). The Volks-Bilder-Bibel had only limited success, yet the purchase of 1,000 copies by the Katholische Bücherverein (Catholic Book Association) in Munich encouraged Perthes to publish a second edition in 1848.

Whereas the engraved illustrations appear somewhat dry and monotonous, the pencil drawings display the refined subtlety of Olivier’s style that would have undoubtedly found a far more appropriate graphic translation in crayon lithography. In these drawings, the artist achieves an ideal synthesis between the minute precision reminiscent of Dürer and a more “Italianate” fluidity. In his monograph on the Olivier brothers, Grote observes how these illustrations “are kept in a beautiful light grey, shadow and light stand side by side in equal values,” and concludes that “the loving devotion and genuine piety of Friedrich Olivier has entered into some of the drawings” (pp. 356f.).

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus tells the story of a man who has fallen victim to robbers. He is deliberately overlooked by both a priest and a levit until a man form Samaria, a despised foreigner, tends to him and takes him to an inn where he makes sure at his own expense that the man will be taken care of. In his drawing, Olivier pulls the various parts of the story together into single image. In the background on the left one sees the robbers escape, on the right the hypocritical pious people walking away. The center, however, is given to the key scene of the parable where the Samaritan lifts the injured man onto his donkey. Naked bar his loincloth with a bandage wrapped around his head, it is probably not too farfetched to sense in the nude figure of the victim an echo of the limp body of Christ as it is sometimes depicted in images of the Pietà.

FRIEDRICH OVERBECK
1789 Lübeck – Rome 1869

The Reconciliation of Jacob and Esau    1866

pencil and black chalk with wash
530 x 720 mm (20 1/2 x 28 inches)

with the artist’s monogram and date at lower right

PROVENANCE
private collection, Germany
sale, Karl & Faber, Munich, October 26, 2016, lot 267
private collection, USA

LITERATURE
Margaret Howitt, Friedrich Overbeck. Sein Leben und Schaffen. Nach seinen Briefen und anderen Dokumenten des handschriftlichen Nachlasses, ed. Franz Binder, Freiburg 1886, vol. 2, p. 432

This impressively large drawing is an intriguing example of Overbeck’s late oeuvre. During the last two years of his life, he received a commission from Bishop Joseph Georg Strossmayer for a fresco cycle in the cathedral of St. Peter in Djakovo in Croatia. The original plan comprised 36 scenes from the Old and New Testament. During his lifetime, Overbeck was only able to finish the cartoons for eight scenes from the life of the Apostle Peter as well as for the four portraits of the evangelists that decorate the spandrels of the cathedral’s crossing. Those frescos as well as the remaining cycle were later finished by Alexander Maximilian Seitz (1811–1888) and the latter’s son Ludwig (1844–1908).

Given the late date of the present drawing, it must have been intended for this project. It expresses one last time the Nazarene quest for a spiritual ideal that the artists hoped to find behind the reality of everyday life. The perfect balance of the composition takes precedence over the three-dimensionality of space. The unerring clarity of forms are nothing less but an expression of the depth of the artist’s religiosity.

THEODOR REHBENITZ
1791 Borstel-Hohenraden – Kiel 1861

Portrait of Elias Bar-Daniel   1840

pencil on wove paper
203 x 165 mm (8 x 6 1/2 inches)

The pencil inscription in the upper-right corner of this drawing supplies the sitter’s name and age: “Elias Bar-Daniel. 27 Jahr.” The writing on the line below this is fainter and in a different hand, describing him further as “Nestorianer aus Kurdistan.” The third line is in Syriac script. The artist’s monogram is at lower right, followed by the place and date: “München 1840.”

In 1811, Theodor Rehbenitz started out studying law at the university in Kiel. From 1812 he continued his studies in Heidelberg. There, he became increasingly interested in painting and especially admired the early German paintings that had been brought together by the brothers Boisserée in Cologne; they had organized a public display of their collection a baroque palace on Karl’s Square, Heidelberg. In 1813, Rehbenitz enrolled at the academy in Vienna and in 1816, moved to Rome. His sister Auguste was married to Friedrich Overbeck, giving Rehbenitz access to the circle of the Lucas Brotherhood, later known as the Nazarenes. In Rome he lived with fellow German artists Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld and Friedrich von Olivier in the Palazzo Caffarelli on the Capitoline Hill. He traveled to Florence, Siena, and other Tuscan towns and spent his last years in Rome working for the Prussian emissary Christian Karl Josias von Bunsen, returning to Lübeck in the fall of 1832. Between 1835 and 1841, Rehbenitz joined the circle of Nazarene artists again in Munich where he lived once more with Schnorr von Carolsfeld and the brothers Ferdinand and Friedrich Olivier. There, he created religious compositions and received commissions for copies, among them most likely the Dresden version of Overbeck’s famous allegory of friendship Italia and Germania. Our drawing dates from this period. In the fall of 1842, Rehbenitz became a drawing instructor at the university in Kiel.

According to an inscription on the old backing sheet, Elias Bar-Daniel was a painter who worked at the time in Munich. The year before, he was portrayed by Rehbenitz’s friend and fellow-artist Friedrich Olivier (1791–1859) in a drawing now in in the Kupferstich-Kabinett in Dresden and dated December 29, 1839 (inv. C 1963-1096 – https://skd-online-collection.skd.museum/Details/Index/867319). Like Rehbenitz, Olivier also identifies Elias as a Kurdish person (“aus Curdistan”) and the sheet bears the same Syriac inscription in what looks like the same hand, probably that of the sitter. The line gives the name as Eliya bar Daniel, equivalent letter-for-letter to אליא בר דניאל. That name by itself could be Jewish or Christian. According to Robert Hobermann, a linguist at Stony Brook University, New York, Jews did not use Syriac script (e-mail correspondence, November 11, 2024). The initially somewhat puzzling (self-)identification of the sitter as a “Nestorian of Kurdistan” therefore begins to make sense. Historically, Nestorianism is a Christian belief that flourished around the middle of the first Millenium AD and went into decline in the tenth century. However, “Nestorian” remained a theological term (albeit one with often negative connotations). The churches that were called Nestorian are the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East, both still alive and functioning today, although nowhere near as large or as influential as they once were. Their members call themselves Assyrians, which suggests that the use of the word here is probably meant as much as a geographic as a religious qualifier.

JOHANN CHRISTIAN REINHART
1761 Hof – Rome 1847

The Gerberstein in the Thuringia Forest   1788

pen and brush with brown and grey inks over traces of pencil on laid paper
520 x 620 mm (21 x 25 inches)

signed in pen and brown ink on one of the rocks in the foreground at right C. Reinhart f. 1788; inscribed by the artist in pen and ink on the verso: Gerber Stein auf dem Thüringer Wald. für den Herzog von Meiningen gemalt

PROVENANCE
private collection, New England
C.G. Boerner, New York, 2019
private collection, USA

LITERATURE
Manfred Pix, Johann Christian Reinhart. Eine Dokumentation in Bild und Wort, vol. 6, part 1, Neustadt an der Aisch 2021, p. 156, no. II/W 263a

Reinhart was born in Hof in Bavaria in 1761. He studied with Adam Friedrich Oeser in Leipzig and with Johann Christian Klengel in Dresden. Between 1786 and 1789 he worked for Duke Georg I of Saxe-Meiningen in his hometown Hof. Georg was only a few days younger than Reinhart and the two became friends – as much as this was possible at the time beyond the boundaries of class.

This newly discovered, monumental drawing is an exquisite example for the type of artwork Reinhart created as compensation for living at court. It is notable that the artist’s inscription identifies the motif: “The Gerberstein in the Thuringia forest, painted for the Duke of Meiningen.” The rock formation known as the Gerberstein lies not far from Bad Liebenstein. It is the highest and therefore most striking peak in the region. The dukes of Meiningen had long since owned a castle in Liebenstein and had added a country house in 1736. Reinhart’s drawing therefore documents a local site within the duke’s realm. On the left side the composition opens to a view into the distance. Reinhart omits any figures and limits the staffage to some goats which help to give viewers an idea of the proportions of the enormous looming rock formation.

Reinhart’s inscription refers to the drawing as being “painted” (gemalt). The artist thereby alludes to the finished character of this artwork, which further reinforced by the sheet’s remarkable size. Although Reinhart was a highly accomplished watercolorist, he limits himself here to the use of different inks to evoke the colors of the landscape.

JOHANN CHRISTIAN REINHART
1761 Hof – Rome 1847

Ideal Landscape with Shepherd Playing Music

pen in black and brown with brush in brown and grey on wove paper
169 × 229 mm (6 10/16 × 9 inches)

PROVENANCE
drawn by Reinhart for Adolf von Heydeck(1787–1856), Dessau;
his sale, Rudolph Weigel, Leipzig, May 25, 1857, lot 1491
Friedrich Schöne, Essen, Stettin, Berlin, Sierksdof (Lugt 3622)
C.G. Boerner, brochure, Düsseldorf 1969, no. 31
private collection Düsseldorf
C.G. Boerner, Düsseldorf
private collection, Canada, acquired in 2003
sale, Karl & Faber, Munich, May 9, 2014, lot 290
private collection, USA

LITERATURE
Feuchtmayr 1975, p. 380 (with reference to the brochure by C.G. Boerner 1969) and p. 383,
no. 1491 (with reference to the Heydeck sale)
Manfred Pix, Johann Christian Reinhart. Eine Dokumentation in Bild und Wort, vol. 5,
Neustadt an der Aisch 2021, p. 453, W 1083

This highly finished landscape drawing as well as the next documents an artistic friendship as well as paying homage to an earlier artistic tradition. The Dessau artist Adolf von Heydeck (1787–Dessau–1856) was a life-long friend of Reinhart. Heydeck planned a series of etchings after paintings by Gaspard Dughet, called Poussino (1610–Rome–1675). Both he and Reinhart were great admirers of Dughet and his work exerted great influence on Reinhart. It was along Dughet’s compositional formula that Reinhart developed his own concept of an ideal heroic landscape. He became an avid collector of the older artist’s work and would ultimate own no less than ten of Dughet’s paintings, seven of which Heydeck chose as models for his prints. The complete series of 25 plates was published as Raccolta di paesi di Gaspare Dughet detto Poussino incisi all’acqua forte da A. Heydeck in Dessau in Paris in 1849 (cf. Hartmut Wittkowski, “In der ‘Manier’ Gaspard Dughets. Der Deutschrömer Johann Christian Reinhart und Adolf von Heydeck aus Dessau. Ein Beitrag zum 225. Geburtstag Reinharts“ in: Jahrbuch für Regionalgeschichte, vol. 13, 1986, pp. 125–144, and F. Carlo Schmid, Naturansichten und Ideallandschaften. Die Landschaftsgraphik von Johann Christian Reinhart und seinem Umkreis, Berlin 1998, p. 259).

In preparation for Heydeck’s prints, Reinhart created highly finished drawings, two of which we can offer here. Far from being “reproductive,” they represent Dughet’s compositions as reimagined according to Reinhart’s own concepts of the late 1830s. They show ideal landscapes that incorporate elements of the sublime such as high mountains and dramatic waterfalls whereas the staffage figures and architectural elements allude to an apparently timeless eternal antiquity. The reduced color range in both drawings corresponds to Reinhart’s later, more classicist style while also taking into account the black and white of the prints.

After Reinhart’s death in 1847 six of the Dughet paintings from his collection were sold by his son to a north american art dealer. They were lost when the ship sank on its way to the States (cf. Andreas Andresen, Die deutschen Maler-Radirer (Peintre-Graveurs) des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, vol. 1, Leipzig 1866, pp. 193f.).

JOHANN CHRISTIAN REINHART
1761 Hof – Rome 1847

Arcadian Landscape with Shepherds

watercolour, pen and ink in brown, grey and grey-blue on wove paper
165 × 225 mm (6 8/16 × 8 14/16 inches)

PROVENANCE
drawn by Reinhart for the artist Adolf von Heydeck (1787–1856), Dessau;
his sale, Rudolph Weigel, Leipzig, May 25, 1857, lot 1489
private collection, North Germany
sale, Karl & Faber, Munich, April 26, 2013, lot 284
private collection, USA

LITERATURE
Feuchtmayr 1975, p. 383, no. 1489
Manfred Pix, Johann Christian Reinhart. Eine Dokumentation in Bild und Wort, vol. 5,
Neustadt an der Aisch 2021, p. 432, W 1082

PHILIPP OTTO RUNGE
1777 Wolgast – Hamburg 1810

Male Nude Kneeling to Right – Akademische Männerstudie    ca. 1800

black and white chalk on buff-colored laid paper
470 x 365 mm (18 ½ x 14 3/8 inches)

Traeger 154 h

WATERMARK
Pieter de Vrees & Comp.

PROVENANCE
Dr. Karl Vötterle, Kassel
private Collection (as a gift from Vötterle)
sale, Karl & Faber, Munich, April 27, 2012, lot 303
private collection, USA

LITERATURE
Regina Schubert, Runges Lehrzeit an der Kopenhagener Akademie, in: Kosmos Runge. Das Hamburger Symposium, ed. by Markus Bertsch and others, Munich 2013, pp. 129–145.

Traditionally, the mastering of human anatomy was a fundamental requirement for every artist. Runge began his anatomical studies early on, when he took lessons from various artists in Hamburg. As models he used the plates in Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica and even attended anatomical dissections for medical students. He continued his studies in Copenhagen where he was enrolled at the academy from October 1799 to March 1801. The anatomy lessons took place once a week in winter, alongside drawing from plaster casts. Dissatisfied with what was offered for art students, Runge began once more attended anatomical lessons starting in February 1800 and furthermore sought out literature on his own. We know that he borrowed the seventeenth-century Anatomia per uso et intelligenza del disgno from his teacher Jens Juel¹. He studied it intensively and made copies from various of the plates.

After studying plaster casts of antique sculptures, he also began drawing from life models. The present study shows such a male model kneeling with his left arm behind his head. Runge even depicted cushion under the man’s right knee as well as the wooden box on which he is resting his right hand. The model is posing on a rounded platform to allowed students to surround him from different angles.

The model’s muscular body is depicted with a high degree of plasticity, further enhanced by touches of white heightening that add highlights against the buff-colored sheet of paper. A very summary sketch, most likely the same model seen from the right, is visible on the right.

___________________
¹Jens Juel’s copy remained in his estate. Abildgaard also owned a copy and listed it in the catalog of his library under the name of the engraver Domenico de Rossi Anatomia per uso et intelligenza del disegno ricercata non solo su gli ossi e muscoli del corpo humano; ma dimonstrata ancora su le statue antiche più insigni di Roma, Rome 1691.

PHILIPP OTTO RUNGE
1777 Wolgast – Hamburg 1810

Rose Twig – Rosenblüte mit Blättern

cut-paper silhouette, mounted on blue-grey paper
250 x 100 mm (9 13/16 x 4 inches)

Richter 176

PROVENANCE
Otto Speckter (1807–1871), Hamburg, thence by decent
private sale, Karl & Faber, Munich, May 2015
private collection, USA

LITERATURE
Cornelia Richter, Philipp Otto Runge. Ich weiß eine schöne Blume. Werkverzeichnis der Scherenschnitte, Munich 1981
Natalja Mischenin, “Pflanzenscherenschnitte” in: Markus Bertsch et al. (eds.), Kosmos Runge. Der Morgen der Romantik, exhibition catalog, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Munich 2010, pp. 360–362

Cutting silhouettes was a popular pastime in nineteenth-century bourgeois circles. Runge loved making them. What distinguishes his silhouettes from many others is that they are not Schattenrisse since he used white instead of black paper – a model that artists like Moritz von Schwind (1804–1871) or the Danish author and amateur artist Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) would soon follow.

Runge had been drawn to this technique since childhood, writing to Goethe that he had always seen scissors als eine Verlängerung meiner Finger¹ (as extensions of my fingers). His brother Daniel reports: Er fertigte dergleichen in den zerstreuendsten Momenten, sich dabey über jedes andre unterhaltend und das entstehende Gebilde schien sich bey dieser gleichsam plastischen Kunstübung fast wie selbstthätig unter der Schere in seine Hand zu bewegen.² (“He made them in the most distracting moments while talking about everything else, and the shapes seemed to emerge under the scissors in his hand as if by themselves, as if it were a sculptural practice.”) This is intriguing to read since one would assume that transforming the three-dimensional shape of a plant into a two-dimensional silhouette is a rather complex process that requires a certain level of concentration.

Runge worked in two steps, first outlining the general shape, then working out the finer details. Over time, he created a veritable herbarium of silhouettes that depict a large variety of different plants. For him, they were in fundamentally explorations of nature – a nature he understood as the basis of his work. Accordingly, he saw both landscape and, inherent in it, the world of plants as divine revelations, with flowers embodying den lebendigen Geist Gottes³ (“the living spirit of God”). Even if, as here, artistic license occasionally prevails – the leaves along the rose’s branch in the silhouette are staggered whereas in nature they grow in symmetrical pairs –, translating the plant in this way reveals what Runge calls its Kunstwahrheit. To achieve this, one merely has to extract it from a piece of paper.

___________________
¹ Letter to Goethe, 1797
² Hinterlassene Schriften von Philipp Otto Runge, vol. 1, Hamburg 1840, p. 370.
³ Runge in a letter to Johann Heinrich Besser, August 1, 1798, in: Hinterlassene Schriften von Philipp Otto Runge, vol. 2, Hamburg 1841, p. 14.

JOHANN GOTTFRIED SCHADOW
1764 – Berlin – 1850

Portrait of a Young Lady    1832

black, white, and red chalk with stumping on light-brown paper
12 1/2 x 9 5/8 inches (317 x 245 mm)

signed and dated at lower left G. Schadow Juni 1832

PROVENANCE
sale, Leo Spik, Berlin, June 16-18, 2005, lot 217
private collection, Germany
sale, Christie’s, London, July 3, 2012, lot 97
C.G. Boerner, New York
private collection, USA

LITERATURE
Sibylle Badstübner-Gröger/Claudia Czok/Jutta von Simson, Johann Gottfried Schadow. Die Zeichnungen, 3 vols., Berlin 2006; vol. 3, pp. 676f., no. 1775a (ill.)

Schadow was one of the most important portraitists in Berlin during the first half of the nineteenth century and his depictions of the city’s society bear witness to the stylistic transition from Neo-Classicism to the Biedermeier period. Whereas the three-volume catalogue raisonné of his drawn oeuvre comprises a total of 2,226 drawings, the overwhelming majority of these are studies and sketches. Of his finished drawings, hardly more than fifty survive.

The present portrait belongs to this small group of highly finished drawings. The artist noted in his calendar on May 31, 1832, that he drew “unsere Minna” (our Minna), and again on June 3: “Retusche Minna portrait” (retouching Minna’s portrait). Unfortunately, we do not know who Minna was (the name is usually used as an endearment for Wilhelmine). In her entry in the catalogue raisonné, Jutta von Simson further mentions that Schadow drew a portrait of Pauline von Splittgerber on March 9 and 13 that year. She was the bride of his nephew Eduard Wolff and the two were married on June 8. Since our drawing is dated to the month of their wedding, von Simson suggests that it might have been intended as a gift for the couple.

LUDWIG FERDINAND SCHNORR VON CAROLSFELD
1788 Königsberg – Vienna 1853

Landscape with Castle    1816

pen and grey ink over pencil with touches of grey brush
176 x 224 mm (6 7/8 x 8 7/8 inches) monogrammed and dated at lower left LS 1816

PROVENIENZ
Eugen Roth, Munich
sale, Grisebach, Berlin, June 1, 2016, lot 103
private collection USA

Ludwig Ferdinand, the older brother of Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794–1872), received his initial training from his father before attending the Vienna Academy from 1804. He was supported by Duke Albert von Sachsen-Teschen and, after some years of travel, returned to Vienna where he became a member of the Academy in 1835, In 1843, he became the first curator of the Belvedere Gallery. His most important pupil was Moritz von Schwind.

Our landscape drawing, dated 1816, belongs to the artist’s early period. It shows a “pure” landscape, without any figures. In his later works, staffage figures are always present, often showing religious subjects. It is highly unlikely that the landscape in this drawing is observed from nature. Instead, the conglomeration of its various separate elements – the tree stump in the foreground, the exaggerate hilly heaps of ground on the right, the single young tree that forms a central axis, the castle on the right – seem to be gleaned from early German models. The technique, too, appears to emulate the work of Dürer, Altdorfer, or Wolf Huber. The drawing is therefore a fascinating document for the general re-discovery of the Altdeutsche Kunst that took place during the early nineteenth century, its greatest proponents being the so-called Nazarenes and their circle.

JOHANN PHILIPP VEITH
1768 – Dresden – 1837

Landscape with the Flight into Egypt (after CLAUDE LORRAIN)    1804

sepia; 500 × 680 mm (19 11/16 × 26 12/16 inches)

signed and dated at lower right P Veith 1804

PROVENANCE
sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, October 17, 2007, lot 159
private collection, USA

LITERATURE
Anke Fröhlich, Landschaftsmalerei in Sachsen in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts, Weimar 2002, pp. 131–136
Anke Fröhlich, Johann Philipp Veith, Ein Dresdner Kupferstecher und Landschaftszeichner, in: Weltkunst, no. 10, 2002, pp. 1584 f.

Veith came from a modest background. He was nonetheless able to study at the Dresden Academy where he became one of the most important pupils of Adrian Zingg. Zingg also taught him printmaking. From 1785 onward, Veith regularly exhibited at the academy exhibitions, mainly presenting sepia drawings with views of the Saxon landscape. He often based his work on models by other artists, both historic (Berchem, Ruisdael) and contemporary (Gessner, Dietricy), transforming them freely into masterful and very original sepia drawings. In his landscapes, he developed a new way to look at nature. While his earliest work were mainly topographical views, Veith ultimately achieved a very different, subjective view of landscape that makes him one of the pioneers of Romanticism in Dresden.

The Dresden Academy accepted Veith as an official member in 1817 and in 1833 he was appointed professor. In Dresden he was also friends with Caspar David Friedrich as well as Philipp Otto Runge. The latter had arrived in Dresden in 1801. However, unlike both of these artists Veith did travel to Italy, first in 1802–3 and again a decade later. Our two large-format sepia drawings were created after his first trip and confirm Veith’s mastery in this medium. They use two landscape paintings by Claude Lorrain, The Flight into Egypt (1647) and Acis and Galatea (1657) as models that at the time counted among the most popular works of the Dresden Gemäldegalerie. By choosing them, Veith clearly had an eye on the marketability of his art, yet Claude’s Italianate settings also allowed him to channel the positive reminiscences he retained from his first Italian trip. Claude had placed the staffage of the Holy Family in the background while arranging the mythological group of Acis and Galatea prominently in the foreground. He thereby united the two works despite their different subject matter in a compositional counterbalance. Veith, in his drawings, manages to translate the hazy glow of Claude’s coastal scenes into the nuanced transitions of the monochrome sepia technique. This subtle sfumato he achieves is new and would soon be further explored by Caspar David Friedrich in his sepia drawings.

JOHANN PHILIPP VEITH
1768 – Dresden – 1837

Landscape with Acis and Galatea (after CLAUDE LORRAIN)    1804

sepia; 500 × 685 mm (19 11/16 × 26 15/16 inches)

signed and dated at lower right P Veith 1804

PROVENANCE
sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, October 17, 2007, lot 159
private collection, USA

LITERATURE
Anke Fröhlich, Landschaftsmalerei in Sachsen in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts, Weimar 2002, pp. 131–136
Anke Fröhlich, Johann Philipp Veith, Ein Dresdner Kupferstecher und Landschaftszeichner, in: Weltkunst, no. 10, 2002, pp. 1584 f.

ADRIAN ZINGG
1734 St. Gallen – Dresden 1816

Bärenstein Castle

pen and black ink with brown wash;
500 x 644 mm (19 11/16 x 25 3/8 inches)

signed at lower right A Zingg ad nat.; verso annotated in pen and brown ink Bern Stein and in pencil Im sächsischen Erzgebirge

WATERMARK
beehive with letters HONIG and JH & Z

This monumental and well-preserved wash drawing by Zingg depicts Bärenstein Castle in the Eastern part of the Erzgebirge in Bohemia (Krušné hory in today’s Czech Republic). The Bärenstein is part of Altenburg and is located on a cliff above the Müglitz Valley.

After early success producing views of his Swiss homeland, Adrian Zingg went to Paris where he worked from 1759 in the etching studio of Johann Georg Wille (1715–1808). In 1766 he was made professor at the academy in Dresden. In his topographical views he freed himself from contemporary notions of landscape still dependent on those of seventeenth-century Netherlandish art. Zingg was among the first to incorporate the local landscape into his art, traveling extensively through Saxony and neighboring Bohemia. His views ultimately set the stage for the next generation of the Dresden Romantics. Since Zingg’s highly finished drawings were meant to be hung on the wall, many of them perished through exposure to light. It is fairly unusual, therefore, to come across these large views in such pristine condition as this view of Bärenstein—and it is highly unlikely therefore that this drawing was ever displayed as intended.

JULIUS SCHNORR VON CAROLSFELD
1794 Leipzig – Dresden 1872

Lot and his daughters fleeing from burning Sodom – Lot und seine Töchter fliehen aus dem brennenden Sodom (Genesis 19:24-26)    1826

preparatory drawing for plate 26 of Schnorr’s Die Bibel in Bildern

pen in brown ink over pencil, with some wash on a collaged piece of paper correcting the arm of one of the daughters
218 x 257 mm (8 9/16 x 10 1/8 inches)

inscribed upper left C.XIX. 23 bis 26, monogrammed lower left JSC and dated lower right d. 25 Dec. [18]26

PROVENANCE
Erhard Kaps, Leipzig (Lugt 3549)
Bassenge, Berlin, May 31, 2019, lot 6748
private collection, USA

LITERATURE
Adolf Schahl, Geschichte der Bilderbibel von Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Leipzig 1926, p. 137, no. 26 (this drawing not known to Schahl)

The work belongs to the earliest phase of Schnorr’s Bible project, still created during his Roman period. While this was a very productive period, examples of these early drawings appear only rarely on the market.

JULIUS SCHNORR VON CAROLSFELD
1794 Leipzig – Dresden 1872

Ahab's Downfall – Ahabs Untergang (1 Kings 22:34–10)    1858

preparatory drawing for plate 118 of Schnorr’s Die Bibel in Bildern

pen and grey black ink over pencil
219 × 260 mm (8 9/16 × 10 1/4 inches)

monogrammed and dated d. 10. October 1858 on lower left

PROVENANCE
Arnold Otto Meyer, Hamburg (Lugt 1994);
his sale, C.G. Boerner, Leipzig, March 16–18, 1914, lot 758
Carl Heumann, Chemnitz (Lugt 555b)
sale, Hollstein & Puppel, Berlin, February 26, 1932, lot 288
Kunsthandel Katrin Bellinger, Munich
Stephan Seeliger, Munich
sale, Bassenge, Berlin, December 2, 2021, lot 6387
private collection, USA

LITERATURE
Adolf Schahl, Geschichte der Bilderbibel von Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Leipzig 1936,
p. 144, no. 118 (this drawing mentioned)

JULIUS SCHNORR VON CAROLSFELD
1794 Leipzig – Dresden 1872

The Queen of Seba Pays Homage to Solomon – Die Königin von Saba vor Salomon (1 Kings 20: 6–10)    1858

preparatory drawing for plate 111 of Schnorr’s Die Bibel in Bildern

pen and brown ink over pencil
218 × 315 mm (11 1/16 × 12 6/16 inches)

monogrammed and dated 18 JSC 58 d. 11 Juli on bottom right

inscribed at left: Die Königin aus Arabien beschenkt [huldiget] Salomo./ Und sie sprach zum Könige: Es ist wahr, was ich in meinem Land gehöret habe von Deinem / Ansehen und von Deiner Weisheit./ Nur ich habe es nicht glauben wollen, bis ich gekommen bin und / habe es mit meinen Augen gesehen. – Und sie gab dem Könige hundred und zwanzig Centner / Goldes, und sehr viele Spezereien und Edelgestein./ I Könige, cap. 10. v. 6.7.–10
(The Queen of Arabia give presents [pays homage] to Solomon / And they said to the king. It is true what I have heard in my country of your / prestige and of your wisdom /’ve seen it with my eyes. – and she gave the king a hundred and twenty cwt / gold, and a lot of spices, and precious stones)

PROVENANCE
Marie Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Munich, by 1936 (according to Schahl)
private collection, Germany
sale, Bassenge, Berlin, November 28, 2013, lot 6511
private collection, USA

LITERATURE
Adolf Schahl, Geschichte der Bilderbibel von Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Leipzig 1936, p.143, no. 111 (this drawing mentioned)
Hinrich Sieveking, Von Füssli bis Menzel. Aquarelle und Zeichnungen der Goethezeit aus einer Münchner Privatsammlung, exhibition catalogue Weimar, Munich, Frankfurt, Munich/New York 1997, p. 110

Like various of the later Bilderbibel drawings made during the 1850s, this one is accompanied by the artist’s inscription of the exact verses that accompany the image in the finished publication.

While this is the only known drawing for this illustration, its sketchy quality in places such as Solomon’s face compared to the specificity of his expression in the woodcut makes it likely that it did not serve as the direct model for the print.

JULIUS SCHNORR VON CAROLSFELD
1794 Leipzig – Dresden 1872

The Rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem by Ezra and Nehemia – Der Wiederaufbau des Tempels zu Jerusalem unter Esra und Nehemia (Ezra 3:10)    1847

preparatory drawing for Cotta’s illustrated Bibel of 1850

pen and black ink over pencil
148 × 143 mm (5 13/16 × 5 10/16 inches)

inscribed JSC d.3 Apr.47 at lower center

PROVENANCE
Arnold Otto Meyer, Hamburg (Lugt 1994)
his sale C.G. Boerner, Leipzig, March 16–18, 1914, lot 747, described as: Original für die Cottasche Kleine Bilderbibel
private collection, Germany
Thomas Le Claire, Hamburg, cat. 22 part 1: Deutsche Romantik: Handzeichnungen und Aquarelle aus der ehemaligen Hamburger Sammlung Arnold Otto Meyer und aus verschiedenem Besitz, 2008, no. 16
sale, Bassenge, Berlin, November 27, 2009, lot 6422
private collection, USA

LITERATURE
Adolf Schahl, Geschichte der Bilderbibel von Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Leipzig 1936,
p. 58
Stephan Seeliger, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld. Zeichnungen aus Privatbesitz, exhibition catalogue, Munich 1994

The drawing prepares one of the 42 wood engravings Schnorr designed for Cotta’s illustrated Bibel: Martin Luther, Die Bibel oder die Heilige Schrift des Alten u. Neuen Testaments … Mit Holzschnitten nach Zeichnungen der ersten Künstler Deutschlands, Cotta’sche Buchhandlung: Stuttgart/Munich 1850; this image appears on p. 571.

In Schnorr’s Bibel in Bildern (1860), the scene, now expanded into a horizontal format, is depicted on plate 126.

JULIUS SCHNORR VON CAROLSFELD
1794 Leipzig – Dresden 1872

Judas, the Maccabee, defeats the enemies and cleanses the Temple – Judas, der Makkabäer, besiegt die Feinde und reinigt den Tempel (1 Maccabees 4:36–37)    ca. 1852

preparatory drawing for plate 152 of Schnorr’s Die Bibel in Bildern

pencil and pen in brown ink on wove paper
210 x 260 mm (8 ¼ x 10 ¼ inches)

inscribed by the artists on the right Priester

PROVENANCE
Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Berlin (by 1936 according to Schahl)
verso with an unknown collector’s mark
Kunsthandel Dr. Martin Moeller-Pisani, Hamburg
sale, Bassenge, Berlin, November 28, 2013, lot 6512
private collection, USA

LITERATURE
Adolf Schahl, Geschichte der Bilderbibel von Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Leipzig 1936,
p. 146, cf. no. 152 (this drawing mentioned)

EXHIBITED
Chrismukkah: Stories of Christmas and Hanukkah, exhibition, Jewish Museum, Berlin, October 2005–January 2006

In this vibrant and sketchy drawing we see Schnorr’s preliminary design, still envisioning many compositional changes. At right, he experiments with the position of the seated soldier's sword. At left, a quickly rendered tangle of lines extending up the margin is legible in the final woodcut as a stack of trophies including a helmet and a cuirass held aloft on a spear by a soldier. The finished design for this woodcut is in Dresden (Kupferstich-Kabinett inv. No. C 1963-1218), dated January 1, 1860.

The first book of Maccabees recounts the Jewish rebellion against their Hellenic Seleucid oppressors (175–134 B.C.). Schnorr illustrates 1 Maccabees 4:36–37: “Then Judas, and his bretheren said: Behold our enemies are discomfited: let us go up now to cleanse the holy places and to repair them. And all the army assembled together and they went up to mount Sion.” Judas Maccabeus, the victorious rebel general, stands at the center, commanding his army to surge uphill towards the temple. The event resulted in the reconsecration of the Temple, thereby instituting the festival of Hanukkah (1 Maccabees 4:59).

JULIUS SCHNORR VON CAROLSFELD
1794 Leipzig – Dresden 1872

Naemi with Her Two Daughters in Law – Naemi mit ihren beiden Schwiegertöchtern Ruth und Orpah    1833

pen, sepia, tempera
332 × 259 mm (13 1/16 × 10 3/16 inches)

inscription JS 1833 at lower left, monogrammed and dated
inscription at the bottom of the picture: Ne aduerseris mihi ut relinquam te et abeam. Ruth cap. 1 v. XVI (Do not tell me that I should leave you and turn away) on the back cardboard with old handwritten notes in ink from the father of Otto von Mühlenfels (the original is included in the envelope): Schnorr von Karolsfeld: Naemi mit den beiden Schwiegertöchtern. Ruth, die nicht von ihr geht und Arped (Orpa), die in ihr Land zurückkehrt. - Geerbt von meiner Schwester Paula Kettembeil (Schnorr von Karolsfeld: Naemi with her two daughters in law. Ruth, who stays with her and Arped (Orpa) who returns to her land. - Inherited from my sister Paula Kettembeil)

PROVENANCE
Ludwig von Mühlenfels (1793-1861),
Otto von Mühlenfels (ca. 1885-1977), grandson of Ludwig von Mühlenfels, lived at the end of his life in Schollene bei Rathenow (Brandenburg), Germany.
The work remained in the Mühlenfels family (an aristocratic family based in Northern Germany) until 1976 when Otto von Mühlenfels sold it to the previous owner (a German Art history Professor, Senior Museum Curator and author of a number of books on German art in the Nineteenth Century).
by descent from Paula Kettembeil
private collection, USA

Schnorr here depicts the moment in the Old Testament book of Ruth when Ruth delivers her impassioned request to Naemi: Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. (Ruth 1, 16). The beginning of the verse is quoted in Latin under the image. Naemi was an Israelite who had moved to Moab with her husband and two sons during a famine in her homeland. The sons married Moabite women, Ruth and Orpah. Naemi’s husband and sons died, prompting her to return to her own people in Israel. Her daughters-in-law followed but she bade them to stay. While Orpah went back to her relatives, Ruth loyally followed her mother.
In this carefully executed watercolor, Schnorr focuses solely on the three women; the landscape is merely used as a backdrop. The artist interprets this scene as one of quiet and tender emotion rather than extraverted drama. His subtle watercolor technique enhances the softness of the drapery folds and the gracefulness of the expressions and gestures.
The watercolor is an independent work and is not part of the many preparatory drawings for his illustrated Bible project. Incidentally, this specific scene is missing from the series where Schnorr chose Ruth Travels with Naemi to Bethlehem (Ruth 1, 19, ill. 84) as illustration for the Book of Ruth, a topic that was apparently better suited to the horizontal format of the other illustrations.
Schnorr was not the only German artist who saw the devotional potential of this moving scene, with Ruth remaining loyal to her mother Naemi even while facing a new and unknown life while Orpah leaves in tears. In 1829–31 Julius Hübner created a large-scale painting of the subject for Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia (Berlin, Gemäldegalerie). Hübner was the first to translate the tender intimacy of the subject into a monumental painting of the subject. The commission was probably of personal significance for the Crown Prince. It could be read as symbolizing his marriage in 1823 to Crown Princess Elisabeth of Bavaria, who would give up her Catholic faith to marry the future Protestant monarch. At the time, Schnorr lived in Munich and while we do not know how he would have known of Hübner’s painting; the closeness in date and subject matter leads one to speculate that it might have inspired Schnorr to create the highly finished and moving devotional drawing of 1833.

LITERATURE
Katharina, Wippermann, 2009, Julius Hübner’s ‘Ruth und Naemi’ als interkonfessionelles Programmbild, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, N.F. 50, 2008 (2009), p. 161ff.
Monschau-Schmittmann, Birgid, Julius Hübner (1806-1882). Leben und Werk eines Malers der Spätromantik, Münster 1993.