Gemälde auf Spinnengewebe. Painting on Cobweb. Peinture sure toile d'araignée.; "Dein Wohl", painting by Rudolf Epp

Innsbruck, 1870. Cloth. Paper pastedown on buckram. Very Good. Beautiful ethereal painting of Tyrolean couple, a hunter and his wife, at a small kitchen table, the wife standing a drinking wine presumably to the health of her husband, both in traditional dress. Based on a painting by the German (Bavarian) painter, Rudolf Epp (1834 - 1910) entitled "Dein Wohl", based on a penciled inscribed caption in the lower corner of the matting. This painting, whose present location we do not as yet know, served as the basis for other adaptations, such as the image on a beer stein, and so the painting surely was well-known and highly regarded in its day as a masterful bit of sentimentalism and nostalgia. This is rendered on material woven from actual cobweb. Exquisite, and scarce, with supposedly fewer than 100 paintings of this type (cobweb) paintings ever done. N.d., circa 1870s. This particular cobweb painting is particularly large for the genre. The artwork is about 11.5 by 8.5 cm, the full cobweb, including the border, as exposed by the matting's window, 13 by 10 cm, the full matting, 24 by 20 cm, and finally, the outer folder is 24.5 by 10.5 cm. Also contained in the small folio is a sample of cobweb material. The painter, Franz Unterberger (1838-1902), was a well-known Austrian painter known for his traditional Tyrolean genre artwork. He retained local artisans to render his image on to the cobweb material. Condition: cobweb with a few fine pinprick-sized holes, not seriously compromising the overall picture, as the holes are mostly in the margin. The folder housing the cobweb, and the cobweb's matting or frame, are both quite soiled though. The inside cover, in contrast, is mostly clean. Missing is a small specimen of un-processed cobweb thread which would have originally been housed under a small flap, inside front cover. That flap is still present. The flaps to hold down the artwork itself have some closed tears along folds joining them to the binding. The most important element of this item, though, is the cobweb painting, and given its larger than typical size, we think even with the cavils one could plausibly grade it as Near Fine.