Georg Philipp Rugendas (1666-1742)

Lot 3
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Estimation :
1000 - 1500 EUR
Georg Philipp Rugendas (1666-1742)
Siege of the fortress of Lille (Ryssel), by allied troops. Pen and black ink, grey wash, on black pencil strokes, 15.5 x 25.5 cm, signed and annotated, below in the centre. The thirteen years of the War of the Spanish Succession - the last great war in the reign of Louis XIV - did not allow for a clear identification of a victorious and a defeated camp, but it did, however, permanently upset the balance of power of the European powers, resulting in the assertion of British naval power, the emergence of Prussia in the German concert, the weakening of French continental hegemony, and the definitive marginalization of the Spanish and Dutch nations. Rich in heroic episodes, this conflict gave rise, especially in the "Allied" camp (Great Britain, Empire, Savoy, Prussia, Holland, opposed to Louis XIV), to a considerable wave of artistic commissions, to the glory of military leaders and their exploits. The painter Jan van Huchtenbergh (1647-1733) was one of the retinue of Prince Eugène de Savoie-Carignan (1663-1736), commander of the imperial armies, and produced a series of easel paintings for him. The Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722), a British commander, had a series of tapestries woven to his glory in Brussels, based on cartoons by Lambert de Hondt Le Jeune. This propaganda, relayed by engraving, responds to the propaganda that, a generation earlier, orchestrated by Van der Meulen, Lebrun, and the engraver Sébastien LeClerc, flooded Europe with the warlike deeds of Louis XIV. In this context, the publisher Jeremias Wolf (1663-1724) published Repraesentatio Belli, ob successionem in Regno Hispanico in Augsburg in 1714, a commemorative collection of 56 engravings to the glory of the Allies. The fruit of the collaboration between Rugendas (Fig.1.), Johann August Corvinus (1683-1738), Abraham II Drentwett (1647-1729), Paul Decker the Elder (1677-1713) and Paul Decker the Younger (1685-1742), the plates are composed according to an almost i
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