GERMAN SCHOOL, 19TH CENTURY
GERMAN SCHOOL, 19TH CENTURY
GERMAN SCHOOL, 19TH CENTURY
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GERMAN SCHOOL, 19TH CENTURY
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GERMAN SCHOOL, 19TH CENTURY

A sketchbook with 126 pages of drawings and writing

Details
GERMAN SCHOOL, 19TH CENTURY
A sketchbook with 126 pages of drawings and writing
in a modern binding
graphite, pen and brown ink, brown and gray wash, watercolor
8 x 6 ½ in. (20.5 x 16.5 cm)

Brought to you by

Giada Damen, Ph.D.
Giada Damen, Ph.D. AVP, Specialist, Head of Sale

Lot Essay

This notebook is a kind of travel journal in images. Some details help date the contents between 1870 and some time after 1884. Two pages record the dates 1870 and 1873, while a drawing of a woman riding a safety bicycle (a bike with equally sized wheels that was introduced in 1884) provides a terminus post quem for other sketches.

The artist captured in the pages of the notebook a variety of things that caught his attention: landscapes, recipes (one is for a fruit jam and written in Swedish), people at work, working tools, and animals. The majority of the drawings are landscapes, made in graphite and watercolor. Several pages are annotated with the names of the locations depicted: Baggesensgade (a street in Copenhagen), Fredriksberg (a neighborhood in the same city) and Skŏndal Leppola, which probably refers to Sköndal in Southern Sweden. From these labels it is possible to infer that the artist used the notebook while travelling in Denmark and Sweden.

Most of the inscriptions are in German, suggesting that the author was one of the numerous German artists who visited and studied art in Copenhagen between the 18th and the 19th Century. At that time, the Danish capital was the seat of one of the most vibrant art academies in Europe, which attracted many artists from Germany, including for example Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) who studied there between 1794 and 1798.

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