Jacob Philipp Hackert expresses his love for animals, expressed in many paintings, in the picture of a mule festively adorned with colorful tassels on its halter, which plods alone through the greenery, carrying baskets on either side.
The previously unpublished picture, which Karl & Faber is auctioning off on May 18 during the “Old Masters & Art of the 19th Century” auction at an estimate of 12,000 to 15,000 euros, was painted by Hackert in 1804 in his adopted home of Italy.
A view of the Camaldolese monastery near Torre del Greco south of Naples is reminiscent of the fact that he repeatedly portrayed their landscapes – a large sheet created in 1770 in pen and brush (estimate 8,000 to 12,000 euros).
The main lot in the Old Masters is a rocky river landscape by the younger Jan Breughel,
A broad spectrum of landscapes dominates the 19th-century offer, ranging from Norway to Capri, from the heathland to the high mountains.
Friedrich Preller the Elder bound storm-tossed oaks on Rügen around 1837 (8000/9000);
August Albrecht Zimmermann lets hunters marvel at the Watzmann massif (3000/4000).
Like many artists of the Munich School, Heinrich Bürkel liked to intersperse landscapes with genre scenes.
His dairymaid has a fantastic mountain view when she looks up from her book (9000/12000).
The catalog assumes the Hungarian Puszta (10,000/12,000) on the basis of the costumes in the vast plain where Albrecht Adam lets a rider meet a man and horses.
Adam traveled to Italy with his brother Heinrich, where his pretty view of Riva on Lake Garda was created (6000/8000).
Carl Spitzweg has a "philosopher in the woods" sitting under sun-drenched leaves, who has also come along as a "bookworm" or "resting walker".
The oil sketch made around 1848 is between 35,000 and 45,000 euros;
18,000 to 24,000 euros are expected for Spitzweg's later “Forest Landscape with Two Women”.
Karl & Faber has already successfully auctioned flower silhouettes by Philipp Otto Runge several times.
This time a delicate violet bush made of white paper is called for.
Runge often cut such things during evening entertainment at his Hamburg friends Speckter, who also owned this top lot from the paper department (16,000/18,000).
Among the 148 lots of prints with their own catalogue, Rembrandt's “Cuivres Originaux” stand out, the complete edition from 1906 a rarity (80,000/100,000).
Valuable works by Dürer culminate in two sheets from the copperplate passion (each 12,000/14,000), and Piranesi has the sought-after complete “Second Edition” of the famous dungeon visions, the “Carceri d'Invenzione” (35,000/45,000).