Three Albums: The Brother's Book; Figural and Animal pieces; and The Legend of the Geese

Das Buch der Brüder: A folio of drawings of daily life; Figuren und Thierstücke III: An album of drawings of daily life and of the animal world; and Fabeln. I. Gänsegeschichte: The Fable of the Geese and the Fox

Details

Three Albums:
The Brother's Book; Figural and Animal pieces; and The Legend of the Geese
Das Buch der Brüder: A folio of drawings of daily life; Figuren und Thierstücke III: An album of drawings of daily life and of the animal world; and Fabeln. I. Gänsegeschichte: The Fable of the Geese and the Fox
each inscribed with the title, (1 and 3) on a label attached to the cover, (2) on the front flyleaf (the front cover lacking), the folios of (1) twenty-six, (2) five and (3) eighteen leaves, with extensive commentaries, some on attached labels, relating to (1) fourteen and (2) two drawings:

Das Buch der Brüder:
1. A peasant family resting in a barn, a donkey to the right
2. A preparatory study for the preceding drawing
3. A girl milking a cow, figures in the byre beyond
4. A farmyard with a peasant feeding pigs
5. A milkmaid spraying a youth from a cow's udder
6. Peasants gathering firewood
7. Fish drying on a line
8. Two milkmaids bearing yokes, a third girl carrying two bundles
9. A peasant by a bread oven
10. Two peasants in a horse cart
11. The preceding image repeated
12. An elegant gentleman, half-length, with mechanical apparatus [the image inserted into the commentary]
13. A carter attacking a snake with his whip
14. A beggarwoman with three children

Figuren und Thierstücke III
15. A woman eating pears, watched by a waiter and another man
16. Two girls consulting a seer

Gänsegeschichte
An unillustrated manuscript copy of the fable, dated '1803'
black chalk, pen and brown ink, watercolor (1, 15-16), in contemporary mounts (1, 15-16)
the albums (1) 13 x 8 3/8 in. (330 x 211 mm.); (2) 16¼ x 10½ in. (411 x 267 mm.); and (3) 21 7/8 x 17 in. (555 x 433 mm.); the drawings approximately 13 x 8 3/8 in. (330 x 211 mm.); and A folio containing sixty-three drawings of figures, animals and other subjects, two etchings after antique subjects, and the introductory page to F. Rosaspina's Agli studiosi del disegno, Bologna, 1798 (88)

Lot Essay

(12) Illustrated in plate IV, p. 135.
(14) The Beggar woman with three children is preparatory to a watercolor of Die in Amsterdam verwitwete Frau des Vogelhändlers in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg (W. Tischbein, ed. P. Reindl, Die Eselsgeschichte, Oldenburg, 1987, fig. 36).

More from Old Master & 19th Century Drawings including Works on Paper

View All