Master Paintings and Drawings Part II
Master Paintings and Drawings Part II
Property from a Private Collector
Johann Adalbert Angermeyer
Still life with a boar's head, small birds and seashells Still life with a stag's head, a kingfisher, a bullfinch and seashells;
Lot Closed
May 26, 02:38 PM GMT
Estimate
6,000 - 8,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Property from a Private Collector
Johann Adalbert Angermeyer
Bilina 1674 - 1742 Prague
Still life with a boar's head, small birds and seashells
Still life with a stag's head, a kingfisher, a bullfinch and seashells;
both signed and dated lower right: I. V. ANGERMEYER F. Ao 1710
a pair, both oil on canvas
each canvas: 13¼ by 20 in.; 33.7 by 50.8 cm.
boar framed: 17¼by 23⅞ in.; 43.8 by 60.6 cm.
stag framed: 17½ by 24 in.; 44.4 by 61 cm.
(2)
Anonymous sale, Vienna, Dorotheum, 14 October 1997;
Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Christie's, 14 May 2003, lot 140;
There acquired.
The stag:
Private family collection, San Francisco, for many years;
Anonymous sale, Beverly, Massachusetts, Kaminski, 13 October 2013, lot 9114;
Anonymous sale, Oxford, Mallams, 20 October 2021, lot 440;
There acquired.
This pair of hunting still-lifes are emblematic of the corpus of Johann Adalbert Angermeyer, one of the first, and most important, Bohemian specialists of the still-life genre. Active in the first third of the 18th Century in and around Prague, Angermeyer trained under the Swiss-born artist Johann Rudolf Byss, who was active in this city from 1689-1713. From Byss, Angermeyer inherited his distinctly precise attention to detail, and he quickly became well-known among the collecting aristocracy in the region for his painstakingly-rendered cabinet still-lifes, a genre that was particularly prized in Bohemia since the reign of Rudolf II.
Angermeyer’s exploration of the still-life genre included woodland still-lifes in the tradition of Otto Marseus van Schrieck and Matthias Withoos, trompe-l’oeil bird still lifes recalling the style of Jacob Biltius, and floral bouquets with visual roots in the oeuvres of Roelandt Savery, Jan Brueghel the Elder, and Johann Rudolf Byss. Although hunting still-lifes were traditionally executed on larger canvases, Angermeyer explored this particular theme in a smaller format, a scale that allowed him to preserve the size of the animals and paint them with great detail. Such examples were popular among Angermeyer’s prominent clientele, including Count Vrsovec, and works like the present pair would have adorned the walls of hunting lodges as records of the prized trophies of this aristocratic pastime.
In both of these paintings, the trophies of the hunt, a stag and a boar, are set atop a wooden table and against a dark background. Behind the head of the boar is a bundle of parsnips, and behind the stag is a head of cabbage. Surrounding both heads are oysters as well as several dead birds, including a goldfinch, a kingfisher and a few buntings, several of which anchor the foreground and are precariously perched along the edge of the table. Angermeyer’s refined and celebrated prowess is found in the careful brushstrokes used to render the bristles of the boar and the fur of the stag, as well as both of their soft, wet snouts. In addition to the brilliant colors of the birds, great detail was used for every element of each scene, down to the single fly in the foreground of one and the single feather in the other.
Many of Angermeyer's works entered important Bohemian collections during his lifetime, and today numerous examples by him are preserved in museum collections throughout Central Europe, including the National Gallery of Prague,1 the Belvedere in Vienna,2 and the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.3
1. Inv. nos. DO 5416, DO 5417, DO 4853, O 18016.
2. Inv. nos. 1453 and 1454.
3. Inv. nos. 1554, 1690, 1691, 1692, 5197, 5851, 5871, 5875, 6009, 6010, 6081, 6082.