“ This Man has Extraordinary Talents ”
( Lorenz von Westenrieder 1785 )
As the Big Cats of each other ,
so Wintter has the Knack of them
Wintter, Joseph Georg (1751 Munich 1789). Panther and Lioness locked in fight. Before boulder lioness on her hind legs in the grip of a panther or jaguar taken hold of her. Black chalk over pencil sketching with some red for the inflicted wounds. Inscribed with the chalk lower right: JG(ligated)Wintter inv. 11⅜ × 8⅜ in (288 × 212 mm).
Brilliant
graphically
utterly executed study
following Ridinger’s etching The Lioness with Her Cubs attacked by a Bear, Th. 718 (see comparative ills.), as on its part being in context with the lion-tiger detail of the Berlin Ridinger painting “Beasts of Prey and Killed Stag” (Michaelis, [German Paintings of the 18th Century], 2002, no. 2272) with its couples of tiger and lion fighting for the prey (detail) and spitting at each other resp.
While in the painting the lion has the upper and in the engraving the position of the lioness not yet appears as hopeless, so with Wintter her fate is practically decided. Just as here the two of them are entangled, rather, how the panther has the knack of the lioness on the right
Wintter compacts the scene to incredible dynamics
not least by his limitation to just the fight. And nothing else.
And how only so setting the feline agility of both the opponents. Correspondingly matchlessly varied also the position of the hindlegs of the lioness with their stretching imparting to the body! How here still the last claw conveys the utmost strain indeed reminds of that not generally agreeable
“ always better than Riedinger ”
by the pope of forest cameralists Wilhelm Gottfried von Moser (Forstarchiv, vol. IV, 1788, pp. 280 ff.) as almost one generation earlier contemporary (b. 1729, from the “famous family of cameralists” [Heß in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie]), anticipated already by the theologian, yet especially historian, Lorenz von Westenrieder of almost the same age (b. 1748; “has generally an impressionable eye for scenic beauties” [Höhn]), who praised him highly in his 1783 “Almanac of Human History in Bavaria” and in 1785 wrote to Christian Felix Weisse, friend of Lessing’s and playwright in Leipsic:
“ This man has extraordinary talents ”
In such a manner then, too,
the bodies converged here , having become one without example
something utterly new has been created .
Up to the now smoldering predatory look aiming at the beholder .
With mostly still fine(st) margin around the borderline. Three tears 15-25 mm deep in the right margin, one of which marginally still extending into the boulder hatching, settled by vélin mounting. The unessential age spotting otherwise perceptible in the white field as patina addition rather even enhancing the effect of this drawing. And bearing in mind Thieme-Becker’s (XXXVI [1947], 79 f.) statement
“ Next Ridinger the best German depictor of the hunt of the 18th century .”
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