Attributed to Aloys Zötl (1803-1887)
Graphite and gouache on paper, 358 x 500 mm
Provenance:
Private collection, Belgium
Aloys Zötl is notable for his paintings and drawings of fantastical animals
and other natural history subjects. Depicted here is quite possibly a White Gibbon, but in a fantastic way.
Decades after his death in 1887, Zötl’s work was re-discovered by surrealist André Breton, who recognized a surrealist aesthetic in it. Breton wrote: "Lacking any biographical details about the artist, one can only indulge one’s fantasies in imagining the reason which might have induced this workman from Upper Austria, a dyer by profession, to undertake so zealously between 1832 and 1887 the elaboration of the most sumptuous bestiary ever seen."
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Although the present piece bears no signature, it is closely related to the work of the Phillips Brothers, for whom Robert Phillips was the leading supplier of coral objects in London. As early as 1870, the company was able to title itself “The most complete collection of fine coral work in the world". Coral jewellery, from elaborate tiaras like the one presented to simple strings of beads, was one of the most characteristic forms of personal jewellery in the Victorian era. The origins of the fashion have been variously traced to Napoleon’s Italian campaigns; to the coral jewellery of a royal bride (the Duchess d’Aumale in Naples in 1845); or (more circularly) to the era’s general interest in decorative naturalism. The European centre for coral design was Naples, with easy access to beds of red coral in the Mediterranean, which were indeed largely destroyed by the popularity during this period. The most prominent designer Robert Phillips directed the fashion from his studio on Cockspur Street. Its heyday in Britain - particularly of the naturalistic strain, which preserved the spiky natural shapes of the coral forms - were the 1850s. Later the fashion collapsed, perhaps under its own weight. (Anderson, 2008)
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