Ludwig Emil Grimm Hanau 1790 - 1863 Kassel

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Description

Ludwig Emil Grimm
a) charity seated in a landscape with two children;b) klecksographie: a couple and an owl riding a boar;c) a study for a portrait of domenico quaglio, sketching at a table
a) dated in brown ink, lower left: 16^tDec. 1853
a) pen and brown ink over black chalk;
b) pen and brown ink and wash;
c) black lead

Provenance

Sale, Munich, Sotheby's, 8 December 1998, lots 7, 16 and 19

Exhibited

b) Münich, Haus der Kunst, Ernste Spiele, Der Geist der Romantik in der deutschen Kunst 1790-1990, 1995, p. 666, cat. no. 207

Literature

a) I. Koszinowski and V. Leuschner, Ludwig Emil Grimm, Zeichnungen und Gemälde, Werkverzeichnis in 2 Bänden, Marburg 1990, vol. 2, p. 85, cat. no. G229;
b) I. Koszinowski and V. Leuschner, 1990, op.cit., vol. 2, p. 306, cat. no. K104, reproduced;
c) Ludwig Emil Grimm, Erinnerungen aus meinen Leben. Mit 34 Bildnissen, 5 Abbildungen und einer Kartenskizze sowie einem Verzeichnis von Grimms Werk..., Leipzig 1911 and 1913, p. 121;
Ludwig Emil Grimm, Erinnerungen aus meinen Leben, ed. W. Praesent, Kassel/Basel 1950, p. 51, reproduced;
I. Koszinowski and V. Leuschner, 1990, op.cit., vol. 1, p. 34, cat. no. 28, reproduced

Catalogue Note

The intriguing wash drawing of a couple riding a boar which forms part of this lot is a so-called 'klecksographie'. The process was developed by the German poet and doctor, Justinus Kerner (1786-1862), and involves blotting a piece of paper with ink and folding it to create an axiomatically symmetrical image, which, in this case, was elaborated with pen and ink. The technique was much used by Carl Jung in the early twentieth century as a tool for psychological analysis; our drawing, however, was clearly intended for amusement rather than therapy.

The drawing was previously offered alongside its symmetrical pendant, which Grimm had worked into a similar image of various characters riding on the back of a large dog.