Two Squirrels by Hans Hoffmann

Two Squirrels , also known as Zwei Eichhörnchen , is a work by Hans Hoffmann, made in watercolour and bodycolour on parchment, 26 × 25.1 cm, and recorded in a private collection. Its conspicuous “AD” monogram and date “1512” falsely claim Dürer's authorship; they do not establish when Hoffmann painted it. ^[1]

The picture brings two very different encounters with an animal into the same small space. The squirrel in front bends towards a nut held between its forepaws. Its head, shoulder and raised tail form a succession of pointed and rounded shapes, while its long hind feet spread across the pale ground. Behind it, a second squirrel turns away. We see a broad, dark back and the side of a head looking towards the left edge. A thin red collar interrupts the brown fur. Their bodies almost meet, but their attention travels in different directions.

This arrangement gives the viewer more than a doubled example of the same creature. The front animal offers face, hands, belly and toes; the other provides the back and the transition from head to shoulders. One is occupied with an action that we can follow closely, while the other's turned head leaves its immediate purpose less clear. Neither looks directly at us. Their absorption makes it possible to inspect them without the sense of a staged exchange with a human spectator.

Fur, tails and a meal

The front squirrel's tail is the great expansive shape in the picture. It rises above the head, spreads out towards the right margin and darkens as it approaches the rump. At its upper edge, individual strokes break away from the main mass, making the outline seem lighter than the body below. The fur on the flank lies more compactly against the rounded thigh. Looking from one to the other, the eye moves between a loose, airy fringe and a firm weight-bearing form.

The rear squirrel's tail supplies a different movement. It descends from the dark body, then curls across the ground towards the feeding animal. The sweep helps join two otherwise separate silhouettes. It also leads towards the small claws, scraps and nutshells at the bottom of the sheet. The picture's broadest gestures belong to the tails; its most concentrated activity belongs to the paws. That difference of scale keeps the eye travelling between the animals as whole bodies and the minute business of eating.

The forepaws are especially engaging because they appear to work together. Pale joints and darker creases distinguish the digits around the nut, immediately below the lowered muzzle. Beneath them, the two hind feet are planted apart, with separate toes and curved claws. The arrangement makes the squirrel's posture intelligible: the large haunch supports the raised body while the forelimbs are free to manipulate food. The tiny dark eye and the line of the mouth give this elaborate structure a point of concentration.

Nuts and broken shells extend that action into the surrounding space. Some fragments are little more than dark marks; larger pieces have curved edges and pale interiors. They suggest a meal already under way, with something discarded as well as something held. Yet there is no branch, tree trunk or undergrowth to situate it. The ground is largely unoccupied parchment, with small areas of shadow beneath the bodies. The result has the intimacy of watching animals at close quarters and the clarity of an arrangement made for inspection.

The collar changes that encounter. Its red line makes the rear animal stand out despite its comparatively subdued colour, and it introduces a human object into an image without a human figure. It may prompt questions about how the animals were kept or encountered, but it cannot tell us how this particular picture was made. The finished image supplies neither a record of a sitting nor an explanation of how the painter held a moving subject in view.

A second version signed by Hoffmann

An especially useful comparison is Hoffmann's Red Squirrel in the National Gallery of Art, Washington. This separate sheet is dated 1578 and bears “Hh / 1578” at the lower centre. The museum records watercolour and gouache over traces of graphite on parchment, measuring 25 × 17.8 cm; it entered the collection as a Woodner gift in 1991. ^[12]

Here one squirrel occupies a narrower, upright field. The essential activity is familiar: the animal sits on its haunches, holds a nut below its mouth and lifts a large tail behind its body. But the visual balance changes. The tail climbs steeply above the head and the upper part of the back, while the two hind feet stand well clear against the empty ground. There are no scattered shells to carry attention sideways. The inscription below the feet adds another reason for the eye to return to the centre of the sheet.

The single squirrel also gives a different account of its face. Its lowered muzzle sits between the dark eye and the clasped forepaws, with long whiskers reaching into the open background. A pale patch below the arm makes a strong break between the chest and the rounded thigh. In the paired picture, the forward animal's face appears more elongated, its near eye is more sharply enclosed, and the far-reaching tail helps fill the broad space above and beside it. These changes affect the animal's presence even before we consider questions of authorship.

Ruth E. Fine, discussing the Washington sheet in 2000, emphasised that the two compositions differ in orientation and detail. She treated them as variants whose order cannot readily be determined. A lost Dürer original has been proposed, but no such original is known, and Fine allowed that it might never have existed. She also left open direct observation of nature as a possibility for the single squirrel. The comparison therefore establishes a close relationship without supplying a secure sequence from a Dürer model to two later copies. ^[13]

That uncertainty makes looking at the differences worthwhile. Removing the second animal changes how much the feeding squirrel must accomplish alone. In Washington, tail, head, paws and feet together hold a single vertical composition. In Two Squirrels , the turned back introduces another large dark volume, while the lower tail and shells spread the action across the width of the parchment. Each arrangement has its own internal demands. The paired study rewards attention to the intervals between the animals as much as to the anatomy of either one.

A painter admired for imitation

Hoffmann's relationship with Dürer developed through access to works that collectors valued and preserved. The Germanisches Nationalmuseum's 2022 exhibition account places him among the privileged visitors to Willibald Imhoff's collection in Nuremberg. It distinguishes precise copies, freely developed variations and independent compositions within his work, and records his appointment as Rudolf II's court painter in 1585. This provides a more useful setting for the squirrels than an assumption that every animal bearing “AD” must have come from Dürer's studio. ^[14]

A much earlier account shows how closely Hoffmann's reputation became associated with convincing imitation. In his continuation of Nuremberg artists' lives, dated 1660, Andreas Gulden described “Hanns Hofmann” as a diligent painter working in miniature and gum colours. He reported that Hoffmann copied Dürer so closely that many of his works were traded as Dürer originals, and that he eventually entered Emperor Rudolf's service. Written after Hoffmann's lifetime, this short notice preserves a historical assessment of his skill and the circulation of his work. It identifies neither this pair of squirrels nor a particular transaction. Its wording leaves the people responsible for selling the pictures unnamed, so it cannot establish the circumstances in which the inscription on this sheet was applied or understood. ^[15]

The inscription nevertheless belongs to the picture's effect. Set high in the otherwise open field, it is easy to notice once the eye moves beyond the animals. Its separation from the bodies gives the small lettering unusual prominence within the composition.

Ksenija Tschetschik-Hammerl relates the small hooks around the false “AD” to Hoffmann's own monogram, interpreting them as a play between deception and disclosure. This interpretation does not document the sheet's commission. ^[1]

She also cautions that Hans Hieronymus Imhoff's seventeenth-century attempts to sell Hoffmann works as Dürers cannot establish fraudulent intentions in his grandfather, Willibald Imhoff the Elder. The inscription alone leaves those intentions unresolved. ^[1]

Tschetschik-Hammerl reports the sheet's acquisition by Lord Northbrook from the Jolly de Bammeville collection in 1854 and its sale at Christie's, London, on 3 July 1990, lot 143. ^[1]

The two pictures invite a final, practical change of attention. After reading the initials, look again at the handling of a tail, the relationship of the forepaws to the muzzle, and the way a turned back balances a feeding body. These are decisions that belong to the making of an image. In the paired sheet, the discarded shells and the red collar complicate the apparent simplicity of two animals on a blank ground. Naming Hoffmann allows those choices to become part of his achievement, while keeping the unanswered questions about dates, models and inscriptions visible.