Neue Reit Schul vorstellend einen ... Le nouveau manège, représentant l'homme de cheval parfait dans tons ses exercices …

"Rare and highly sought after suite from the "great" riding school". Thienemann 628-645.

Suite of 18 prints drawn by Ridinger, engraved by Gottfrid Seüter and enhanced in color by hand. Each plate represents a rider and his mount in an exercise. Letter in French, German and Latin. Presence of a stamp in blue ink (1 cm in diameter). It represents a stag and the letters "St" in a circle.

Successively student of Johann Falch and Georg Philipp Rugendas, Johann Elias Ridinger (1698-1767) specialized in equestrian and hunting representations. As director of the Augsburg Stadtakademie, he pursued a brilliant career, as evidenced by the acquisition of his works by the Marquis of Westminster and also by the Russian imperial court. His fame spread throughout Europe, in particular thanks to the production of several richly illustrated treatises on horsemanship. His works were published successively from 1722 to 1775 and were widely distributed. They codify the practices and customs that took place "in the riding schools of the royal, imperial or princely courts of Europe as well as in the academies intended for the education of young noble men and elites" [1].

This suite of eighteen prints, finely hand-colored, comes from the Nouveau manège, representing the perfect horseman in all his exercises [...] published in 1734. Johann Elias Ridinger brilliantly represents the art of riding, he subtly restores the sprezzatura of the rider who executes precise and codified movements with the aim of instructing the animal in the services and uses required as well as the beauty of the gesture. Over the course of the plates, the artist deploys his talents in order to restore the best of the masses and the volumetry. With a great sense of precision, he uses sizes and counter-sizes to reproduce not only the muscular tension of the rider and his mount, but also the different varieties of texture ranging from the animal's hair to the nuances of the sand strewn around the arena. Testimony to the brilliant posterity of the art of Johann Elias Ridinger, his compositions published in 1734 were notably taken up again in the twentieth century, Françoise de la Perrière reused them to make a pattern of printed silk squares for the famous house Hermès.            

[1] Amandine Jelen, "Les livres équestres à l'époque moderne (XVIème-XVIIIème siècles) : conceptions, circulations, réceptions", thesis project, Tours, Université François-Rabelais, Versailles, project for the Centre de recherche du château de Versailles, 2019, p. 1.