The Book of the Sybil IV

Sybyllische Bücher IV.: An album of drawings illustrating proverbs and folk wisdom

Details

The Book of the Sybil IV
Sybyllische Bücher IV.: An album of drawings illustrating proverbs and folk wisdom
inscribed with the title on a label attached to the cover, the album with forty-four leaves, three inscribed with commentaries to three attached and three associated drawings:
1. Jeder will Herr im Neste seyn.. (Everybody wants to rule the roost): Four nude infants fighting in a bird's nest in the branches of a tree
2. Ein hungriger Bär und ein hungriger Wolf (A hungry bear and a hungry wolf): A bear grappling with a fox
3. Soldiers sacking a monastery
4. A column of infantry standing at ease
5. A beggar woman with two infants, a cavalry patrol beyond
6. Auf der siebenjährigen Krieg (From the Seven Years War): A hussar catching geese, a mounted hussar beyond
black chalk, pen and grey ink, watercolor (2-6) heightened with white (2), in contemporary mounts
the album: 20 5/8 x 13 in. (528 x 331 mm.); the drawings approximately 8 1/8 x 12 5/8 in. (206 x 321 mm.); and Five drawings including three of military scenes; two of heads of bearded men; and a draft of the commentary to Auf der siebenjährigen Krieg (11)

Lot Essay

(1) A drawing connected to the scene of Infants in a nest is in the Landesmuseum, Oldenburg (W. Tischbein (ed. P. Riendl), Die Eselsgeschichte, Oldenburg, 1987, fig. 77).
(1 and 6) Illustrated in plate IV, p. 135.

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