While doing the migration away from Tumblr and adding old drafts I also checked some links. The one pointing to the Google Image search showed two new Ric prints (see Ric 27 )and Ric 28 ). And as if that weren’t enough luck, I could hardly believe my eyes when I read the description: Someone not only claimed to have solved the Ric mystery, he also provided proof. Since I’m still in my migration project, I didn’t manage to update all affections sections and pages yet. But the relevant part of the eBay description has it’s own page now. Great work Mark!

Images by Mark Strong of Meibohm Fine Arts .

[Update 1. October 2020]: This entry is now always the first, new entries start below.

This blog has been moved to Projektemacher . It’s now powered by Hugo and GitHub .

There have been a few updates during this process:

• Images are now available in highest possible resolution
• An fullscreen view has been added
• Some old drafts are now public (over 33% more content - including a previously unknown work of Ric)
• Some more hints are available

A few day ago I bought an interesting book at my favorite rare book book seller : A catalog of deliverable prints of the “Kunstverlag Hanfstaengl ” for the year 1961. The woman at the counter told me that the book has been sitting around on the shelf for ages and offered me to look up the price again, just in case the value dropped. Thy have tho policy to offer books at a lower price then the one on the web. It turned out, that the price increased in the last years, but in that case they stick with the original offer.

Prints made by “Kunstverlag Hanfstaengl” are quite common in Germany, you can find them often on flea markets, the quality is good, and many people are confused by the fact, that they can be very old and try to sell those as originals.

Anyways, I bought the book, since i’ve discovered a print in it, that I own. It’s the one of the Kingfisher on page 168. I never managed to read the whole signature and now I know the name, I learned that I was actually searching with a few wrong fragments. The etching is by the artist Kurt Meyer-Eberhardt from Munich.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to claim the Fritz Neumann and Kurt Meyer-Eberhardt are somehow related, even if there are some similarities in the motives. That might be just be the Zeitgeist between the 50ies and 70ies.

But maybe there are more similar catalogs out there by other art publishers that may contain works by Ric or Fritz Neumann.

This is the probably older version of the blind stamp that’s used on some prints by Fritz Neumann.

It imitates the Holsten Gate in Lübeck (second image), another indication of a North German origin. So far, inquiries from the Lübeck City Archives about former art publishers in the city have not yet been answered.

For examples of the blind stamp in use, see:

• Fox Terrier by Fritz Neumann (First image, lower right corner)
• Two Fox Terriers by Fritz Neumann (Last image)

You can also look at the pages tagged with “Stamp” .

A while a ago I’ve added a post showing a painted tile painted by Fritz Neumann and produced by Rosenthal . Since the company has quite a history they also offer a archive research service. In spring 2019 I’ve send them an inquiry about the history of this particular product and the artist, Today I got an answer. Since I don’t have their permission I don’t quote the reply here. The raw facts:

• Produced by Rosenthal Handmalerei in Munich between 1934 and 1951, since the mark was only used in this time span - especially for export goods to the USA.
• A painting by the German painter Fritz Neumann (1881-1919) was used as a template.

Every regular reader will be surprised now and notice that the dates of life and the theme do not go together: The second statement is wrong with a probability bordering on certainty, but so far there has been no answer.

All hints of the original blog are incorporated now. The next steps are to wait for some replies and to find out more about the Holsten Gate blind stamp.

I’ll continue to post new images of Ric’s works, when I find them. Until then the frequency of new entries will be quite low.

This is the stamp mark (blind stamp) used on the prints of Ric and Fritz Neumann. There is now a dedicated page on this trace. It will be updated in the next few days with more examples and traces.

You can also look at the pages tagged with “Stamp” .

Additional photos from different sources (like eBay and Google Image Search) have been added, the “About”  section has been updated. Links to external sites (except eBay) had been added to the Wayback Machine .

The next steps are the different known traces like the stamp mark and the different Fritz Neumanns.

The list of works by “Ric” has been copied from the original page . They are accessible via tags from the “Known works” page, that way future posts will be assigned to the according entry automatically. The posts with contents from the original blog had been tagged with “Taken from Blogspot” .

Also the some of the texts (About , Ric ) are finished.