The Book of the Sybil II

Ueberbleibset der Sybyllischen Bücher, Gesammelt vor der Grotte von C[uma] II: An album of drawings illustrating proverbs and folk wisdom

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The Book of the Sybil II
Ueberbleibset der Sybyllischen Bücher, Gesammelt vor der Grotte von C[uma] II: An album of drawings illustrating proverbs and folk wisdom
inscribed with the title on a label attached to the cover, the album with forty-six leaves, many inscribed with commentaries associated with twenty attached drawings:
1. Der Unfall (The Catastrophe): An artist begging at the roadside with a picture illustrating the catastrophe that has befallen him
2. Die Zigeunerfamilie (The Gipsy Family): A family of gipsies halted at a frontier post
3. Der Warnungspfahl (The Warning Sign): Two hunters seated by a sign warning of a sharp incline, a carter descending the hill beyond
4. A shrine to the Virgin in a moonlit Italian street
5. Entenjäger (The Duck Hunter): Two figures on a pier watching a man hunting duck, skaters on the ice beyond
6. Three horsemen breasting a hill
7. Auf de Märkten (At the market): A crowd listening to a street-crier
8. A girl feeding two horses, a farmer harvesting crops beyond
9. Two girls fighting over a dish over food in a gigantic kitchen
10. A dog in a manger, two cows and a hen and chicks in the barn beyond 11. Quäle nie ein Their zum Scherz, denn es fühlt wie du den Schmerz (Never torment an animal for fun, it feels pain as you do): Boys playing with a cat and a dog on a table
12. Bist du bös, so gaa na de Göes: A mother leading a girl towards a goose
13. Lernst du wohl Issest du dich guter Hühner voll Lernst du übel Musst du mit der Sau über den Kübel: A boy thrown into a pigsty
14. A girl sheltering under a tree during a storm, three geese to the left
15. Knaben brechen dem Baum die Aeste ab, um die Aepfel bequemer zu pflücken... (Boys break the branches from a tree to get at the apples more easily): Three boys clinging to the falling branch of an apple tree, two others eating apples to the right
16. Der Weinkärner und der Schäfer (The vintner and the shepherd): A vinter with a crashed cart and broken wine cask calling to a shepherd beyond
17. Six boys teasing a drunkard in an inn
18. A cat stealing fish from a kitchen table
19. Two figures by a volcano
20. A classical heroine in mourning, a river god and the figure of Fame to the right
black chalk, pen and brown ink, watercolor, some heightened with white, in contemporary mounts
the album: 17 5/8 x 12 1/8 in. (447 x 311 mm.); the drawings approximately 8¼ x 13 1/8 (210 x 333 mm.); and A preparatory drawing to (9) (20)

Lot Essay

(1) The seated beggar appears as a character in Tischbein's fable The Legend of the Donkey; a version of the composition is in the Landesmuseum, Oldenburg (W. Tischbein (ed. P. Reindl), Die Eselsgeschichte, Oldenburg, 1987, p. 261 and pl. XVI).
(1, 2, 4 and 9) Illustrated in plate IV, p. 135.

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