A fine suite of four numbered prints recording the extensive gardens on the Karlsberg, a broad hillside which rises above Kassel, the seat of the Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel seven kilometres away.
Offered with four associated prints, also engraved and published by Wolfgang Christoph Mayr, and struck on untrimmed sheets of the same paper, depicting the grotto in the gardens of Schloß Wilhelmsthal, a summer residence in the village of Calden near Kassel, and the Karlsaue, a three kilometre-long garden on the left bank of the Fulda.
sold
Fünck, Johann Georg
Augsburg 1721 – 1757 Kassel
Plans and views of the gardens at Kassel-Weissenstein
Kassel, Wolfgang Christoph Mayr, [circa 1750]
Four prints (each circa 360 × 495 mm platemark, struck on untrimmed sheets uniformly 520 × 740 mm), engraved by Wolfgang Christoph Mayr after drawings by Fünck, matching impressions in first state, numbered i–iiii
■ (i) Prospect des Carls-Berges oder der berühmten Grotten und Wasserfälle bey Cassel so weit dieses Werck bishero ausgeführet worden [also in French] | J.G. Fünck Arch del. | W. C. Mäÿr Sculp | à Cassel chez W.C. Mayr graveur de la Cour | Cum Privil. Sac. Caes. Majest . | [numbered lower right] i
■ (ii) Durchschnitt und Grundriss dersämtlichen Bau- und Wasserwercke des Carlsberges [also in French] | J.G. Fünck Arch del. | W. C. Mäÿr Sculp | à Cassel chez W.C. Mayr graveur de la Cour | Cum Privil. Sac. Caes. Majest . | [numbered lower right] ii
■ (iii) Das obere achteckigte Hauptgebäude, von vornen anzusehen [also in French] | J.G. Fünck Arch del. | W. C. Mäÿr Sculp | à Cassel chez W.C. Mayr graveur de la Cour | Cum Privil. Sac. Caes. Majest . | [numbered lower right] iii
■ (iv) Durchschnitt des Hauptgebaudes, von innen des Hofes anzusehen [also in French] | J.G. Fünck Arch del. | W. C. Mäÿr Sculp | à Cassel chez W.C. Mayr graveur de la Cour | Cum Privil. Sac. Caes. Majest . | [numbered lower right] iiii
Offered with four associated prints also engraved by Mayr (see below).
paper watermark in all eight prints a crowned shield with wolf, lettered beneath I A V | Wolfeg[g].1
provenance ‘A German Family of Title’, consigned to Christie’s, ‘Old Master, Modern and Contemporary prints’, London, 18 December 2001, lots 2, 16.
Superb impressions on full sheets.
A suite of prints recording the extensive gardens on the Karlsberg, a broad hillside which rises above Kassel, the seat of the Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel seven kilometres away.
This park (renamed Wilhelmshöhe in 1798) had been designed by an Italian stuccatore and would-be architect, Giovanni Francesco Guerniero, whose lavishly illustrated Delineatio montis, published in 1705, presented the project as if completed. When Guerniero departed Kassel, in 1715, however, only about a third of his designs had been executed, owing to technical difficulties and stupendous cost. Our plans and views, drawn at mid-century by the Landesbaudirektor to Friedrich i at Kassel, Johann Georg Fünck, engraved and published by the Hofkupferstecher Wolfgang Christoph Mayr (d. 1776), are therefore of great interest, as records of the actual appearance of these Baroque gardens at mid-century, as a last glimpse before the extensive remodelling ordered by Landgrave Friedrich ii.
The first of the four numbered prints is a view (‘Prospect des Carls-Berges’) emphasising the Octagon, a pavilion some two hundred feet high surmounted by a thirty-foot tall copy of the Farnese Hercules, and the Cascade, a complex, stepped waterfall interrupted by grottoes and fountains.2 The second print (ii) is a plan,3 and prints (iii) and (iv) show the Octagon in elevation and section.4 The prints subsequently were issued with added publication line à trouver dans l’Officine du Mr. Seligmann.
■ (a) Die Grotte zu Wilhelmsthal (305 × 490 mm platemark), engraved by Wolfgang Christoph Mayr after a drawing by Fünck
■ (b) Grundriss der Lust und Orangerie Garten in der Carlsaue beÿ Cassell (450 × 690 mm platemark), engraved by Mayr after a drawing by Fünck
■ (c) Aussicht der Orangerie des grossen Gartens von der Mittag seite anzusehen (330 × 490 mm platemark), engraved by Mayr after a painting by Johann Heinrich Tischbein the Elder
■ (d) Aussicht des Teiches des grossen Gartens von der Seite der Oberneustadt von Cassel (334 × 485mm platemark), engraved by Mayr after a painting by Johann Heinrich Tischbein the Elder
The first of these associated prints (a) depicts the grotto in the gardens of Schloß Wilhelmsthal, a summer residence in the village of Calden near Kassel. This grotto had been designed by the Prussian architect Georg Wenceslaus von Knobelsdorff, whose pupil Fünck was before his appointment in Kassel in 1746. Fünck himself was responsible for laying out the surrounding gardens and his drawing for the engraver Mayr survives in Kassel.5
The other three associated prints are a plan (b) and two views of the Karlsaue (c–d), a three kilometre-long Renaissance garden on the left bank of the Fulda. The plan was drawn by Fünck and engraved by Mayr; the view of the Orangerieschloß (c), built in 1710–1711, with a pavilion added a decade later to accommodate sculpture by Pierre Etienne Monnot, was engraved by Mayr after a painting by Johann Heinrich Tischbein the Elder (1722–1789), Hofmaler and Direktor der Kasseler Akademie; and the view of the gardens (d), showing the large pond and its island, also was engraved by Mayr after a painting by J.H. Tischbein the Elder.
reference Katalog der Ornamentstichsammlung der Staatlichen Kunstbibliothek Berlin (Berlin 1939), no.33491. The initials signify Joseph Anton Unold (1717–1785), proprietor of the papermill ‘in der Hölle’ near Wolfegg.
2. Other impressions ● Berlin, Kunstbibliothek, Ornamentstichsammlung, 3349 (reproduced in Architektur in Darstellung und Theorie, exhibition catalogue by Marianne Fischer, Kunstbibliothek Berlin, 1969, pp.70–71 no. 111: ‘Die Folge umfasst fünf Kupfertafeln, vier zeigen Ansichten der Anlagen in Wilhelmshöhe [our (i)-(iv)], die fünfte die Grotte in Wilhelmsthal [our (a)]’) ● Darmstadt, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Kartensammlung, Ansicht 3473 (http://tukart.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/115/) ● Kassel, Staatliche Museen, Graphische Sammlung, 9746 (Der Schlosspark Wilhelmshöhe in Ansichten der Romantik, catalogue of an exhibition held in Ballhaus am Schloss Wilhelmshöhe, 4 April–27 June 1993, edited by Ulrich Schmidt, Kassel 1993, p.110 no. 6) ● Marburg, Hessisches Staatsarchiv (Hans Enno Korn, Landgraf Karl von Hessen-Kassel, 1654–1730, catalogue of an exhibition of the Hessischen Staatsarchivs, Marburg 1980, pp.35–36 no. 91; Inken Formann, ‘Warum wurde erhalten, was bereits im Bau verfiel?: Gedanken über die Gründe für die Erhaltung der Wasserkünste des Schlossparks Wilhelmshöhe’ in ‘Alles scheint Natur, so glücklich ist die Kunst versteckt’: Bernd Modrow zum 65. Geburtstag, Munich 2007, p.38 Abb. 5).
3. ● Kassel, Staatliche Museen, Graphische Sammlung, 12252.
4. ● Berlin, Kunstbibliothek, Ornamentstichsammlung, 3349 (Architektur in Darstellung und Theorie, op. cit., pp.70–71 no. 111, with reproduction of print iii) ● Kassel, Staatliche Museen, Graphische Sammlung, 9746–9747 (Herkules: Tugendheld und Herrscherideal: das Herkules-Monument in Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe, catalogue of an exhibition held at Staatlichen Museen Kassel, edited by Christian Lukatis und Hans Ottomeyer, Eurasburg 1997, pp.157–158 nos. 60–61 Abb. 112–113; Korn, op. cit., no. 92, with reproduction of print iii). Fritz Lometsch, Wilhelmshöhe. Natur und Formergeist in dem schönsten Bergpark Europas (Kassel 1961), pls. 44–45, unlocated impressions of (iii) and (iv). Simplified copies in reduced format accompanied Friedrich Christoph Schmincke and Friedrich Groschuff’s Versuch einer genauen und umständlichen Beschreibung der… Hauptstadt Cassel (Kassel 1767).
5. Kassel, Museum Schloss Wilhelmshöhe, Graphische Sammlung, 7017 (‘Bestandskatalog der Architekturzeichnungen’: http://212.202.106.6:8080/dfg/museumkassel/show.jsp). Bernhard Schnackenburg, ‘François de Cuvilliés und Georg Wenceslaus von Knobelsdorff, zwei Antipoden der Rokokoarchitektur in Wilhelmsthal bei Kassel’ in Kunstchronik 11 (November 1997), pp.593–599, fig. 5; Triumph of the Baroque: architecture in Europe, 1600–1750, catalogue of an exhibition held at Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi, July–November 1999, and at other venues, edited by Henry A. Millon (New York 1999), pp.491–492 no. 224.