An "unsurpassed" collection

Kapeller, Josef Anton / Warnberger, Simon. [Trachten aus Tirol].

€ 8.500,00

Rare, complete set of twenty-four magnificent costume plates in an unusual and striking binding set with mother-of-pearl. Each plate is hand-coloured in a careful, skilful style and captioned in-plate in German (with the first 16 of the 24 also captioned in French), engraved by the German landscape painter Simon Warnberger (1769-1847) after the Austrian painter Josef Anton Kapeller (1761-1806). Published around 1800, these meticulous and artistic renderings of Tyrolean traditional dress and textiles set the standard for the increasingly popular genre of "peasant costume" collections: "Diese Tiroler Trachten sind noch immer unübertroffen geblieben, und an Kunstwert wohl auch nicht erreicht worden" (Nagler VII, 381).

The engraver behind the collection, Warnberger, was considered one of the precursors of landscape mood painting. He spent time in Bavaria, Italy, and Austria, and would have had first-hand knowledge of the Tyrolean region. Largely established as an oil painter, he nonetheless respected print-making as a medium, and was one of the first artists successfully to use Alois Senefelder's new lithography techniques. Today his works are held in the Neue Pinakothek and the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich, among other places.

Four booklets were published with six plates each (i.e. 24), with a mix of signed and unsigned plates. These include idealized scenes of daily life exhibiting the traditional dress of a region, including "Ein Kellermädchen aus der Gegend von Innsbruck", "Eine Bäurinn aus dem Unterinnthale in Tirol", "Eine Bäurinn aus dem Thale Tesino in Tirol" posing with a full basket of fruit in front of a grape vine, and "Ein bewaffneter Tiroler Bauer aus der Gegend bey Innsbruck" with spiked club, curved sword, and rifle. The people of the region pose with their cows, their finest textiles, pipes and rifles, setting the scene for an armchair traveller.