Rugendas’ Horsemen Sketch
of Terrifically Tangible Speed of Movement
from “ the
Famous Leipsic Heinrich Campe Collection of Drawings ”
Rugendas I, Georg Philipp (1666 Augsburg 1742). Three horsemen. Two galloping, the left one walking. Pen drawing in black over pencil. Lower right inscribed with black pen in italics : G. P. R. 1703. 121 x 173 mm.
Provenance
Heinrich Wilhelm Campe , Leipsic ,
his partition 1863 ,
with his oval blind stamp HWC lower left (Lugt 1391)
Pauline Brockhaus, Leipsic, or Luise Vieweg , Brunswick , as b. Campe
Nagler, Monogramists, III, 279: “the italics are to be found on drawings”. – Mounted by old. – Laid onto large brown collection carton (43.4 x 32.5 cm) with white lining + wide stamped margin with German inscription “Collection Campe”, below “Georg Philipp Rugendas / Augsburg 27. XI 1666 - 19. V. 1742 / Pupil of I. Fischer (recte Fisches) / Famous Battle Painter.”, all in slightly paled white. – Predominantly in the white field feebly foxspotted, entirely disguised by the speed of the picture.
From the year of war 1703 as so decisive for Augsburg
within the Spanish War of Succession with especially its siege + occupation by the French-Bavarian troops (Dec. 15, 1703 – Aug. 16, 1704). “In the course of this siege Rugendas showed the courage and the intrepidity of the warrior; defying the dangers he dared to see from close what so far he only created from his imagination” (Nagler 1845 in the Künstler-Lexicon). Correspondingly storming ahead the gesture of the two galloppers, the left one furthermore with rifle.
This terrifically communicating speed of movement of the latters additionally increased by the comparably quiet outside left as antipole. Coming along absolutely unpretentiously this sketch, considered by Campe as worthy of his collection, reveals with a bang “the great draughtsman Rugendas” who must have been
“ tremendously sure of his ability
in the field of horse drawing ”
so Gode Krämer in the 1998 Augsburg Rugendas catalog with regard to a plenty of detail studies in which “there never are horses under the riders” (pp. 27 ff.).
And Anke Ch. Held in her 1996 catalog raisonné of the paintings + selected drawings:
“ Movements difficult to represent , like (as here) of horsemen in the assault are recorded with photographic exactness” (page 121).
Qualifications which fully confirm what hundred years earlier had Wilhelm Schmidt summing up
“ without doubt a first-rate talent, for not to say, a genius. Doubtless, set under better conditions, like living in the Netherlands about 1650, an artist … who would have
surpassed all his horse and battle competitors ”
(Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie XXIX [1889], p. 600).
As already 1803 Meusel stated in his “Biography of the Battle Painter Georg Philipp Rugendas” his engravings were “a true dictionary for the horse draughtsman” (after Held, p. 126).
And for the immediate 18th century the drastic statement of the painter colleague Ferdinand Kobell from 1771 may stand, by which he differentiated the artistic Augsburg of the previous generation exemplarily:
“ only a pity that at such a place
a Ridinger – and Rugendas have lived ”
(Decultot and other ed., Joh. Gg. Wille, Correspondence, Tübingen 1999, p. 486).
Present execution in black pen over pencil of the standard of the earlier period : “Principally under the exact drawing in pen in black, later also brown ink there is an equally exact preparatory drawing in chalk, slightly beside the pen version …” (Krämer, op. cit., p. 32/II).
To encounter this drawing finally with a Campe provenance reaching over generations is its acme in its own right. For the merchant and Bavarian consul general Heinrich Wilhelm Campe (1770-1862), born in Deensen on the Weser, is garnished by a family bevy of publishing, book trading, and pedagogic importance. Branched in Hamburg, Brunswick, and Nuremberg, censure-seasoned publishers of Heine and young German literature, participants at Theodor Körner’s funeral. And by two of his three daughters he wrote publishing history of the finest. They became Madame Brockhaus + Madame Vieweg.
And while the paintings of the collection were sold at auction in Dresden in May 1863 – a first collection of 470 paintings + 1300 drawings had to help overcome a financial bottleneck – the drawings were parted among the daughters. Whereby the stock of the third daughter Sophie, married with the physician Prof. Hasse, had the longest duration due to intensive continued collecting activity and was dissolved only in 1930 with the Ehlers Collection and by chance remains of the Vieweg part. Among which five works of the elder Georg Philipp Rugendas, but not the present one. Created from military experience it survived several more attacks of the same kind and
with its 300 years now here and today passes the market once more
with a meantime stay in the old “famous Leipsic Heinrich Campe collection of drawings”.
Offer no. 15,180 / price on request
“ I received today your … with excellent small Hollar print in good condition. It like me very much … I will send you my new order, naturally it’s possible/again Hollar print. Thank you very much for all ”
(Mr. Z. B., September 12, 2003)