Lot 67: Hans Hoffmann (Nuremberg 1545/50-1591/92 Prague)

A crouching cat
watercolour and bodycolour on vellum
9 1/2 x 15 in. (24 x 38.2 cm.)

London, British Museum, Albrecht Dürer and his legacy, 2002-3, no. 224.

G. Bartum, et al., in the exhibition catalogue, Albrecht Dürer and his Legacy. The graphic work of a Renaissance artist', The British Museum, 2002, pp. 270-1, no. 224, illustrated.

Executed two years after Hans Hoffmann was first listed as a citizen and painter on the Ratsverlässe of Nuremberg in 1576, this vigorously portrayed Crouching cat is a masterly example of the artist's mature work.

Hoffmann was probably active in Nuremberg from 1557, and although he may have spent part of the intervening 19 years in the Netherlands, it was Nuremberg that was to have the greatest impact on his work, not least as heir to the artistic heritage of Albrecht Dürer. The period between 1576 and 1584, when he left for Munich, was Hoffmann's most prolific period. He was well known as a portrait painter, but his lasting fame was built on the sequence of drawings in bodycolour on vellum, such as the Crouching cat, derived or inspired by Dürer's own natural history studies.

In late 16th century, the greater part of Dürer's studio was in the possession of Willibald Imhoff, grandson of Dürer's close friend the humanist Willibald Pirckheimer, and it was in this collection that Hoffmann would have had the opportunity to study the earlier master's work. Indeed, it appears that the two men may have contrived to 'expand' the holding of Dürer drawings by creative rearrangements of original compositions to which false Dürer monograms were added. It also seems likely that Hoffmann made a record of the Dürer drawings for Willibald Imhoff or his son Karl when the originals were sold. Hoffmann's drawings are in any case rarely slavish copies but take the earlier drawings as starting points from which to explore late 16th century concerns. For example, in Hoffmann's variation of Dürer's celebrated Blue roller hanging from a nail (the variation now in the British Museum, the original in the Albertina, Vienna) he takes the earlier master's careful life drawing and applies a virtuoso touch, emphasising the richness of the tones, applying a sheen of life and impressing us with his technical skill, an approach far from Dürer's meticulous study (J. Rowlands, Drawings by German Artists in the British Museum, London, 1993, no. 268).

The Crouching cat is similarly an expression of Hoffmann's talents. Although it does not depend on a known Dürer original it has been suggested that the hindquarters were inspired by Dürer's Hare of 1502 in the Albertina. As with the Blue roller hanging from a nail however, Hoffmann takes what must be a life study and lingers over the carefully delineated soft fur. To this he adds an element of narrative by setting the cat in a tensed pose focussed on a target outside the picture space. This narrative element and the virtuoso handling can also be found in Hoffmann's Red Squirrel in the Woodner Collection at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, which is signed and dated 1578, providing a probable date for the Crouching cat (M. Morgan Grasselli, The Touch of the Artist: Master Drawings from the Woodner Collections, exh. cat., Washington, National Gallery of Art, 1995-6, no. 58).

The present drawing remained unpublished until the 2003 British Museum exhibition, when it was shown with its pendant, a Wild Boar Piglet, signed and dated 1578, now in the collection of Jean Bonna (N. Strasser, Dessins Italiens de la collection Jean Bonna, Paris, 2006, p. 9, fig. 2). The scale and degree of finish of both drawings suggests that they were made for an important patron, perhaps the Nuremberg patrician Paulus Praun (1548-1616). An inventory of Praun's collection records a portfolio of 'fine heads, birds, animals and flowers' which was later split and from which most of the Hoffmann drawings not in the Imperial collections now at the Albertina can be traced (K. Achilles-Syndram, Die Kunstsammlung des Paulus Praun: die Inventare von 1616 und 1719, Nuremberg, 1994, p. 244, no. 355). 50 natural history studies in watercolour and bodycolour from the group are now in the Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest.

In 1585, Hoffmann moved to Munich at the request of Duke Wilhelm of Bavaria, before being appointed Court Painter to the Emperor Rudolf II in Prague in 1586. The imperial court was the most active centre of artistic activity in the period, and indeed by the end of the century Rudolf had succeeded in buying the majority of the Imhoff collection.

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.