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A set of four lovely watercolours, each showing a young German lady in a fancy gown

[COSTUMES]. HECKEL, Catharina SPERLING.
[Four young ladies in fancy gowns].
[Augsburg, ca. 1725?]. Four drawings in brown ink, watercolour and coloured gouaches on vellum, highlighted with gold (each 5.9 x 9.0 cm). Each mounted in a later passe-partout with a gold border, in an ebonized wooden frame (23.5 x 20.5 cm).
€ 6,500
A matching set of four lovely and delicate watercolour drawings, each depicting a young lady in a fancy German costume, drawn and painted on vellum by the Augsburg artist Catharina Sperling Heckel (1699-1741). She learned painting and drawing from her father, the Augsburg goldsmith Michael Heckel, engraving from Johann Ulrich Kraus, and married the engraver Hieronymus Sperling (1695-1777) in 1725. It is not clear whether she made these drawings shortly before or shortly after her marriage. She is best known for her ca. 1728 miniature portrait of Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie), the young pretender to the English throne. She never recovered from the birth of her first child in 1741, dying within a few weeks. Each drawing shows a young German lady wearing a long gown and a cap or bonnet, but one also carries a hat. The four drawings differ in the style of the gowns and other elements.
In very good condition. With a few small chips in the paint of the frame. Lovely watercolour costume drawings of four young German ladies, perhaps from a court wedding in the free Imperial city of Augsburg. Cf. Thieme & Becker XVI, pp. 208-209.
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Art, architecture & photography  >  Caricature, Costume & Satire | Drawings, Prints & Watercolours
Europe  >  Drawings, Photographs, Prints & Watercolours | Germany
History, law & philosophy  >  Women Studies