Feeding Mule - Rear, from Die Zweite Thierfolge
Medium
Etching in black on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Plate: 14.4 × 10.8 cm (5 11/16 × 4 5/16 in.); Sheet: 16.9 × 13.4 cm (6 11/16 × 5 5/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
129573
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
One of Reinhart’s rare departures from a lifelong focus on landscapes, this realistic pair of etchings (2013.439–440) depicts two views of a single mule standing in the Italian countryside. The mule’s dual positioning possibly alludes to Renaissance-era studies of the female nude. Thus the mule becomes not just a prop in a landscape, but the artwork’s protagonist, a carefully studied figure atop a familiarly bucolic ground.
About the Artist
Johann Christian Reinhart · 1761–1847
Johann Christian Reinhart (1761–1847) was a German painter and engraver who became one of the founding figures of German Romantic classical landscape painting, spending nearly six decades in Rome and transforming his adopted city into an inexhaustible subject. Born in Hof, Bavaria, on 24 January 1761, Reinhart initially followed his father into theological study before his passion for drawing took...