Hero and Leander. Series of nine pen and ink lithographies, partly with tone plate. 1818/19

Ulrich Ludwig Friedrich Wolf

1776 – Berlin – 1832

Sheet size: 56.8 x 45.1 cm. Winkler, 934.4. I. - V, party with different details.

Hero and Leander was planned as a first plate for the second instalment of the edition Polyautograph drawings by the first European artists of our time, which was to be published by Wilhelm Reuter. Wolf drew the lithography on marble. The following list of proof impressions, different states and variants of colour demonstrates the willingness to experiment on the part of artists and printers in the early period of German lithography. We attempt to show a chronological development of Hero and Leander different from that described by Winkler.

1. Pure pen and ink lithography, without inscription and tone plate.
a. In black on thick greyish-brown paper.
b. In dark brown on white sheet.
c. In black on white paper.

2. Pure pen and ink lithography with inscription, without tone plate.
a. In black on paper painted yellow on one side only, with maculature impression of the same plate on the verso.
b. In black on paper painted yellow on one side only.

3. Tone plate only on thin ribbed paper.
a. in reddish ochre.
b. in olive green.
c. in olive green, but darker as b.

4. Pen and ink lithography, with a tone plate in olive green with the inscription on white paper.

Items 1.a.c; 2a; 3.a.b.c.; 4 have been described in the still most detailed standard work on the subject of German lithography, Ralf Armin Winkler’s Die Frühzeit der deutschen Lithographie. Katalog der Bilddrucke von 1796 - 1821 [The Early period of German Lithography. Catalogue of the Prints 1796-1821 ], Munich 1975. They are here supplemented by two variants and represent the most complete series of this important German early lithographic work described and illustrated in all the most recent publications on the subject. (see: Bild vom Stein. Die Entwicklung der Lithographie von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart , Kupferstichkabinett der Kunsthalle Bremen, 1976, p. 195; Von Senefelder zu Daumier, Die Anfänge der lithographischen Kunst, Haus der Bayrischen Geschichte München, 1988, cat. no. 161.)

There are two series almost as complete in the Albertina, Vienna (4 plates) and the Kupferstichkabinett, Hamburg (5 plates).

Hero and Leander, in itself a rare plate, is in this form unique.

Bought by a private collection, UK.