The Twin Brothers Ludwig and Emil Schulthess

Description

Twins Ludwig and Emil Schulthess are dressed in identical clothing and pose alongside plant specimens and drawing tools. This drawing’s breathtaking technique—the charcoal seemingly blown on the page to produce a near photographic quality—belies its painstaking execution. The drawing is devoted to that which can be seen and observed: the brothers press and draw flowers, documenting the world around them just as Hans Jakob Oeri records them with exacting precision. Oeri’s composition embodies the scientific spirit of the Enlightenment, the 18th-century European intellectual movement that championed reason and observation of nature.

Provenance

Sold, Koller Auktionen, Zurich, Sept. 22, 2006, lot 3331. Galerie Talabardon & Gautier, Paris, by 2007 [Paris 2007]. Sam Josefowitz (1921–2015), Switzerland; sold, Christie's, Paris, Mar. 20, 2024, lot 83, to Stephen Ongpin, London; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2024.

The Twin Brothers Ludwig and Emil Schulthess

Hans Jakob Oeri

1818/19

Accession Number

273468

Medium

Black chalk on ivory wove paper, fixed

Dimensions

41.5 × 43.3 cm (16 3/8 × 17 1/16 in.)

Classification

prints and drawing

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Regenstein Endowment Fund