Philip Wouvermans | Oeuvres. Paris, 1737, equestrian scenes including battles and hunting

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£ 3 048
Auction dateClassic
28.11.2023 14:00UTC +01:00
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Sotheby´s
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United Kingdom, London
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ID 1076613
Lot 90 | Philip Wouvermans | Oeuvres. Paris, 1737, equestrian scenes including battles and hunting
Philip Wouvermans

Oeuvres. Paris: Jean Moyreau, 1737

Folio (560 x 435mm.), engraved title and 45 SUPERB COPPER PLATES (out of a total possible plate count of 100, and lacking the portrait), INCLUDING one leaf with two engravings and SIX DOUBLE-PAGE ENGRAVINGS, ALL FINELY COLOURED by a later hand, and all of which are after the works of Philip Wouvermans, contemporary brown morocco gilt by Manoury, with richly gilt-tooled floral borders, raised bands, one spine compartment with red morocco label lettered in gilt, others densely gilt with floral tools, gilt turn-ins, all edges gilt, brocade paper endleaves, neatly re-jointed and with small repairs to head and tail of spine

This work is composed entirely of very large folio engraved plates depicting landscapes, hunting scenes, and battles by Philip Wouvermans (or Wouwermans, 1619-1668), a Dutch painter renowned for his exceptional and highly sought-after depictions of horses. The present collection contains a wide variety of subjects—from a humorous “traffic jam” on a rural road that results in a pitcher of spilt milk, to more sombre depictions of warfare — but the common thread throughout all of these images is the presence of horses and deference to equine culture. As Benezit tells us, “Many artists have painted horses, but none with such devotion, none who cared about the social life of the animal, so to speak. He painted as a technician but also as a poet”.

According to Bryan, these engravings are the most significant work of Jean Moyreau, a French printmaker and publisher who was admitted into the Académie française in 1736. Lewine tells us that Moyreau engraved a total of 78 plates after Wouvermans (the last being in 1754), and that “other artists have done work in the engraving line after Wouvermans up to 1780, and these later productions are often found added in large or small numbers”; as a result, “copies differ as regards the number of plates, as they were published at intervals.” Lewine records as many as 106 plates in a single copy, but bibliographies usually record a maximum of 100. Regardless of the number of plates present, this work is very rare on the market: RBH records just four copies in more than 40 years, only one of which was “complete” with 100 plates.
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