THE ARMY OF THE BLUE KING 1682 - 1726
Elector Max II. Emanuel of Bavaria (1680-1726) is considered to be the creator of the standing Bavarian army. After assuming the regency in 1682 he had ordered the Reichsfreiherr Hannibal von Degenfeld, advanced general-fieldmarshall-lieutenant to form up this army.
Already from 1683 Max Emanuel led his newly recruited regiments through the campaigns against the turcs (already since 1687 respectfully titulated “The Blue King” by his adversaries) and also during the War of the Spanish Succession until the battle of Blenheim/ Höchstaedt in 1704.
Anton Hofmann (1863-1938) surely is the outstanding portraitist of the Bavarian army of that époque. With the facsimile reproduction of this work of art, published in 1909, we offer you to subscribe to, he created an iconography of the Bavarian soldiers of the “Blue King” second to none.
“Nearly parallel to the great work of Müller-Braun (also available as a facsimile reprint by LTR publishing house Ulf –Joachim Friese – with an English and French translation of the extensive captions on the black-and-white- as well as the underlines of the full-colour-plates) Anton Hoffmann had set an apex to the works about costumes of the Bavarian Army painters”, Jürgen Kraus writes on page 74 of volume 5 of the Publications of the Bavarian Army Museum, published by Ernst Aigner, Ingolstadt, 1982: Bavarian Military Painters from Beich to Thöny.
Methodically and conceptually reclining to Adolph Menzels legendary work on the “Army of Frederic the Great”, also published as a complete facsimile of all three volumes in our
Publishing house, Anton Hoffman presents a sequence of pen drawings of characteristic basic types, which are valid for all the regiments of a respective branch of service.
The measurements of the prints are consistent with his originals created on cardboard.
Anton Hoffmann had traced his soldiers in pen drawings, precise to the smallest detail, in very eventful and impressive poses as excercising, battle and skirmish scenes as well as handling their weapons – initially not planned to be coloured. Hoffmann restricted the necessary information of the colours on schemes on two full colour-plates in the supplement.
He was not able to revert – just like Menzel could – to a fullness of original garments or pieces of equipment.
Hoffmann based his illustrations on contemporary paintings, etchings, tapestry and his studies in sources and in the material in archives that are mostly lost today:
To every depiction Anton Hoffmann designates the respective source(s) in the accompanying text (German).
These 64 pages of text passes us on plenty of detail information about the development of the Bavarian army from 1682 to 1726.
On two black-and-white plates Anton Hoffmann combined the depictings of a number of discovered original weapons and pieces of equipment.
Essentially Anton Hoffmann presents the typical appearance of the Bavarian soldiers about 1720.
Günter Koch coloured the black-and-white plates of an original black-and-white-copy of the work for his own collection in a very fine gouache style, in order to be able to see the fine lines of Hoffmanns drawings:
Full-colour full-page reproductions of all the 56 full colour- and 2 black-and white-plates in the original size of the respective motif (measurement of the depictions about 395 to 295 cm / about 155 to 116 inch) on large plates (420 x 297 cm / 165 to 117 inch).
THE ARMY OF THE BLUE KING
DAS HEER DES BLAUEN KÖNIGS
THE SOLDIERS OF THE ELECTOR MAX II. EMANUEL OF BAVARIA
DIE SOLDATEN DES KURFÜRSTEN MAX II. EMANUEL VON BAYERN
1682 – 1726
DEPICTED IN „WORDS AND DEPICTIONS“
BY ANTON HOFFMANN – MUNICH
GESCHILDERT IN WORT UND BILD VON ANTON HOFFMANN – MÜNCHEN
Coloured by Günter Koch
ISBN 978-3-922565-74-3
Digital fac-simile reprint of the work, created by Anton Hoffmann originally in black-and-white drawings, hand-coloured by Günter Koch, containing 56 full-page full-colour, 2 black-and-white reproductions, printed on white cardboard with the 64 pages of German text (table of contents, preface, information about the sources, survey of all Bavarian regiments and branches of Service of the epoch 1682 to 1726 in table form, printed on light beige paper). Hand-bound in o n e v o l u m e in light-blue linen (coated) with silver embossing and marborized book end paper.
The digitally reprint is completed with three black-and-white pages with drawings of Bavarian soldiers of that time by the artist and 7 full-page reproductions of originally separately published postcards with full-colour prints of the work (size: 148 x 105 cm / 5,8 to 4,1 inch)
Elephant f o l i o s i z e
186 EUROS
inclusively VAT (August 2014) plus packing and postage
Please see also our site mentioned in the left column under the title "Army of the Blue King"