About the Work
To this day, Wilhelm Busch is famous for his amusing if not ironic picture stories, above all for “Max and Moritz”, the two rascals who take pleasure in their well-meaning misdeeds before they themselves receive their bitterly wicked punishment and meet their end. That Busch was a true double talent in the field of art and poetry is impressively demonstrated by these picture stories, yet they also prove him to be a fine observer of basic human nature.
In profound affection he dedicated a series of manuscripts to his Frankfurt patroness Johanna Kessler (1831–1915), with whom he was in close contact between 1868 and 1877. These manuscripts were either produced in preparation for the picture stories or he created them himself in laborious service to her. They then came to the Städel Museum in 1930/31, giving an insight into his creative process. Busch usually began by drawing a sequence of pictures with a free, sure hand on large sheets of paper. He then cut them out and rearranged them, as in the case of the series of pictures for “Jobsiade” (1871, inv. no. 15325–15357, Städel Museum), and then sent them to his publisher. Here, the rhymed text came later, but the verses were also usually created only in a second step. In contrast, the illuminated manuscripts of “Pater Filucius” (1872, inv. no. 15518–15559, Städel Museum), “Dideldum!” (1873, inv. no. 15359–15416) and “Abenteuer eines Junggesellen” (1875, inv. no. 15429–15517) already show verses and pictures. In their arrangement, they also anticipate the later layout. For the printing, the pictures had to be reproduced last as wood engravings. For this, Busch copied the image templates directly onto the printing block, usually in pencil, whereby he had to mirror the picture for it to appear correctly on the printed page. The engraving was then done by a professional xylographer. The illuminated manuscripts of “Hans Huckebein” (c. 1870, Inv.-Nos. 15560–15572, Städel Museum) and of “Der heilige Antonius von Padua” (1871, Inv.-No. 15358, Städel Museum) were created after the prints as a favour to his patroness Johanna Kessler. Their design is based on medieval illuminated manuscripts.
Around 1870, the publisher Carl Müller-Grote (Grotesche Verlagsbuchhandlung) asked Wilhelm Busch to illustrate Carl Arnold Kortum’s “Jobsiade,” a humorous late-18th century epic that enjoyed some notoriety as a student life satire. In order to present his proposals to the publisher, Busch mounted the zestfully and jauntily drawn sketches on differently coloured papers and briefly noted the corresponding text passages below. However, since the sketches were less illustrative than independently narrative, they were out of the question for Grote’s project. Busch then, unsuccessfully, offered them to Strasbourg-based Moritz Schauenburg, who had published the first edition of “Antonius”. It was not until 1871 that he met Otto Bassermann who went on to become his publisher: the “Skizzen zur Jobsiade” appeared in November 1872, now also with Wilhelm Busch’s verses.
Compared to the print, the drawings are slightly smaller and mostly in reverse; Busch thus refrained from mirroring the motifs when transferring them to the woodblock and regarded their reading direction as flexible. He did, however, adapt the sweeping sketches to the new medium, sometimes extending them a little further for the wood engravings or making them more pointed in their layout. – Cf. the remarks by Hans Ries in: Wilhelm Busch. Die Bildergeschichten. Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe, Hannover 2002, vol. II, col. 1232–1319, esp. col. 1292–1293 and 1295–1298.
