with swamped barrels signed on a long flat, fitted with moulded brass fore-sights on engraved beds, chiselled and engraved with scrolls and foliage on a finely punched and gilt ground over the breeches, each stamped with a mark beneath (Neue Støckel 42), chiselled and gilt tangs, chiselled and gilt locks decorated with scrolls of foliage en suite with the breeches and tangs, fitted with matching cocks and steels (one cock retaining screw replaced, areas of light pitting), figured walnut full stocks (small closed cracks), carved with mouldings over the fore-ends, a spray of foliage behind the rear ramrod-pipes, and about the tangs, the barrel channels each inscribed in pencil 'AR/1898/2/KN1912', cast and chased gilt copper-alloy mounts, comprising pierced side-plates in the Parisian taste, decorated with trophies-of-arms and a bound prisoner on the right and another figure on the left, probably Hercules with the Nemean lion, 'bird's head' pommels fitted with grotesque mask caps with foliate tangs, trigger-guards chiselled with acanthus terminals and trophies-of-arms on the bows, gilt copper-alloy trigger-plates, a pair of gilt-brass ramrod-pipes, and wooden ramrods with gilt-brass caps, and one pistol with brass inventory tag numbered '1930' 30.0 cm; barrels (2)

Provenance

The Gewehrkammer of Ernst August I, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar (1688-1748), Schloss Ettersburg, Saxony

Wilhelm Ernst, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1876-1923), sold E. Kahlert & Sohn, Berlin, circa 1923

George F. Harding Jr., Chicago, acquired by August 1927

Transferred to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1982, Acc. No. 1982.2879, sold in this room, 25th June 2014, lot 196.

Literature

Walter J. Karcheski Jr., 'Some Netherlandish Firearms in the George F. Harding Jr. Collection of Arms And Armor, The Art Institute of Chicago', Proceedings of the International Association of Museums of Arms and Military History XIV Congress 1996 , (Amsterdam: 1996), p. 76.

Jean Jaques Behr is recorded in Liège circa 1720-40 as a gunmaker and dealer in firearms. Other firearms by this maker are recorded in the armoury of the Counts of Schönborn at Schloss Würzburg. See Gaier 1976, p. 81