About the Work
Johann Erdmann Gottlieb Prestel, who became a renowned painter of soldiers, horses and hunting in the 1830s, obviously used this sketchbook at the beginning of his artistic career. According to the occasional dates, the drawings were made between 1821 and 1823, partly in and near Munich, where Prestel continued his studies, and partly in Tyrol. The first pages are mainly filled with studies of horses, which Prestel apparently drew at a military stud farm and observed closely, but still executed rather stiffly and with frequent use of an eraser (see the ‘eraser crumbs’ between the pages mentioned in the situation report). Some of the drawings may have been removed for later use. In the book’s second half, during a walk through Tyrol, the depictions of horses and riders give way to landscape views and figure studies, especially of men in traditional Tyrolean costumes. Not all drawings in the book are by Prestel; one page with profile portraits bears the signatures of fellow artists ‒ the painter Schäffer, who has not yet been identified, and the Munich portrait painter Joseph Bernhardt (1805‒1885), who also made the drawing of a forester from Schwaz in this sketchbook.
For a full sketchbook description, please see “Research”.
