The Twin Brothers Ludwig and Emil Schulthess

1818/19

Hans Jakob Oeri
Swiss, 1782-1868

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.

Status: On View, Gallery 221
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: Hans Jakob Oeri
Title: The Twin Brothers Ludwig and Emil Schulthess
Place: Switzerland (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1818–1819
Medium: Black chalk on ivory wove paper, fixed
Dimensions: 41.5 × 43.3 cm (16 3/8 × 17 1/16 in.)
Credit Line: Regenstein Endowment Fund
Reference Number: 2024.125
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/273468/manifest.json

Le XIX e siècle (Paris: Galerie Talabardon & Gautier, 2007), cat. 10 (ill.).

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.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.