703 - Ferdinand Staeger, *Happy Childhood* (*The Young Adalbert Stifter*) and *The Donkey Man and the Beauty*, etchings, one dated 1919, both in beautiful Art Nouveau frames

Ferdinand Staeger, *Happy Childhood* (*The Young Adalbert Stifter*) and *The Donkey Man and the Beauty*, etchings, one dated 1919, both in beautiful Art Nouveau frames Ferdinand Staeger, 1880 Trebitsch, Moravia, Austria-Hungary - 1976 in Waldkraiburg, Bavaria, German painter and printmaker, *Happy Childhood* (*The Young Adalbert Stifter*), etching, 28 x 20 cm, signed, dated, numbered 3/XXV, behind glass in a beautiful Art Nouveau frame with copper fittings; ‘The Donkey Man and the Young Beauty Lying by the Stream, Surrounded by Elves’, etching, 29.2 x 19.8 cm, signed, mounted on passepartout and behind glass in a beautiful wooden Art Nouveau frame About the artist: Ferdinand Staeger attended the Technical College for Textile Design in Brno from 1894 to 1896 and then the School of Applied Arts in Prague until 1902. In 1920, Richard Braungart wrote about Staeger, amongst other things, in the journal *Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration*: ‘Staeger’s artistry in his line work, his drawing and, above all, the spirit in his works is unique… Trees, houses, clouds and mountains, people and animals are all equal to one another; he recognises no distinctions, which is why he embraces everything the eye can conceive with the same love. Pine branches, squirrels, grass and flowers, stones and leaves - the artist perceives everything with equal importance and places the emphasis on meticulousness… Staeger is not always an idealist, as in these and similar works. It would certainly be wrong to call him an optimist. Some of his works bear the painful marks of war; it is as though they reflected the downfall of the ideals of the nobility and the saints.”