Johann Esaias Nilson
1721 - Augsburg - 1788
Playing Cards in a Rococo Garden, 1756
pen and ink, grey wash
16,6 x 26 cm
signed and dated “J.E. Nilson inv: 1756”
LITERATURE:
Peter Prange: German Master Drawings from the Wolfgang Ratjen Collection 1580 - 1900, National Gallery of Art, Washington 2010, p. 113, note 13
PROVENANCE:
Drouot Paris, Sale December 4, 1974, lot 4.
This drawing is part of a set of four on the theme of society games, which were engraved by Nilson himself in 1757-1761.* The first print, entitled Neues Caffehaus is the frontispiece, the second shows the motif of the present drawing and the Boardgames and the Billard are respectively the third and fourth. The prints are of the same dimensions as the drawings. The drawings for the Boardgames and Billiard are at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, from the collection of Wolfgang Ratjen, while that for the frontispiece is unlocated.** The prints of the set contain a short one-liner amourous legend, the one of the card games being: "Quadrille heisst das Spiel, man wählt sich Hülf durch Karten, Da muss Spadille offt auf Frauenhülfe warten." (“Quadrille is the name of the game, you can choose to be helped by cards, but Spadille often has to wait for women's help"). Most of Nilson's prints and drawings, and even paintings, depict genre scenes - divertissements as termed by Peter Prange - are set in an rocaille environment.
As a draughtsman, Nilson specialised in scenes set in extraordinary rococo environments. His prints were highly influential on the decorative arts of the period such as porcelain, silver objects as well as furniture. His fame led him to be court painter to the Palatinate as early as 1761 and slightly later head of the Augsburg Kaiserlich-Franziscischen Akademie. In 1769, he succeeded Johann Elias Ridinger as head of the local Municipal Academy.
* G.-D. Helke, Johann Esaias Nilson (1721-1788). Ausburger Miniaturmaler, Kupferstecher, Verlger unt Kunstakadel, Munich, 2005, p. 270, fig. 1.36.
** M. Schuster, Johann Esaias Nilson: ein Kupferstecher des Süddeutschen Rokoko, 1721-1788, Munich, 1936, respectively nos. 80-84.
€ 7.500