Recueil de cent paysages. Inventées, et gravées à l’eau-forte par Aldert van Everdingen
sold
- Subjects
- Art books - Early works to 1800
- Prints - Artists, Dutch & Flemish - Everdingen (Allart Pietersz. van), 1621-1675
- Prints - Artists, Dutch & Flemish - Verboom (Adriaen Hendricksz.), c. 1628-c. 1670
- Authors/Creators
- Everdingen, Allart Pietersz. van, 1621-1675
- Artists/Illustrators
- Everdingen, Allart Pietersz. van, 1621-1675
- Hodges, Charles, died 1846
- Verboom, Adriaen Hendricksz., c. 1628-c. 1670
- Printers/Publishers
- Boom, P. van de (fictitious printer)
- Owners
- Bedford, John Russell, Duke of, 1766-1839
Everdingen, Allart Pietersz. van
Alkmaar 1621 – 1675 Amsterdam
Recueil de cent paysages. Inventées, et gravées à l’eau-forte par Aldert van Everdingen.
Amsterdam, P. van de Boom, 1696 (fictitious imprint)
folio (318 × 192 mm), (51) ff., complete, comprising letterpress title and 50 leaves on which are printed 101 engravings (one, two, or three on the recto of each leaf), the first print (the so-called ‘frontispiece’) signed with the monogram ch (Charles Hodges?), the rest either by Adriaen Hendrickz. Verboom (2 prints) or Allart van Everdingen (98 prints).1
paper printed title: watermark Pro patria (maid of Holland within a palisade and holding a spear), initials m v d below (height 120 mm); plates: watermark a circle or shield bearing a crown and initials g r within crossed branches, initials w b h below (height 70 mm); Pro patria (height 100 mm)
provenance John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford (1766–1839), engraved armorial exlibris — Sotheby’s, ‘Catalogue of valuable printed books removed from Woburn Abbey, the property of His Grace the Duke of Bedford’, London, 16 June 1964, lot 289, sold £80 to Wagner — anonymous consignor, Bonhams, ‘Books, Maps, Manuscripts & Historical Photographs’, London, 22 November 2011, lot 422
Paper defect in folio 26 (tiny loss of image), a few insignificant spots and stains; overall in fine state of preservation.
bound in 19th-century red half-morocco, back lettered Everdingen’s | Landscapes.
Below ‘The Church in the Valley’, by Everdingen
The Recueil de cent paysages is a nearly-complete collection of Allart van Everdingen’s landscape etchings, supplemented by two complementary etchings by Adriaen Hendricksz. Verboom, a ‘frontispiece’ devised by another printmaker, and letterpress title (transcribed above) with imprint ‘Amsterdam… 1696’. It is testimony to the appreciation of Everdingen’s graphic oeuvre which continued long after the artist’s death. Apparently plundered by generations of printsellers, complete copies of the Recueil de cent paysages are now unfindable: only one other complete copy is recorded (Rijksmuseum Research Library, Amsterdam).
The graphic oeuvre of Allart van Everdingen consists of about 165 prints (etchings and ten rudimentary mezzotints), of which about 104 depict either the Dutch countryside or the mountainous vistas of Sweden and Norway, and fifty-seven illustrate the story of Reynard the Fox.2 In their original states they are mostly pure etchings, often left unfinished with their borderlines incomplete or absent. It is likely that they were originally printed and distributed by Everdingen himself.
The matrices subsequently passed (evidently as a group) through other hands, to be successively reworked and restruck (most prints are known in three or four states).3 Borderlines were routinely strengthened with the engraver’s burin, corners finished, shadows darkened by cross-hatching, and the sky retouched both in drypoint and with the burin; several prints were radically reworked.4 The two landscape etchings by Verboom (c. 1628–c. 1670) were not significantly altered.5
The letterpress title with imprint ‘Amsterdam 1696’ is deceptive, a clumsy attempt to make the restruck prints seem near-contemporary (see Fig. 1). Judging by the paper evidence, the Recueil de cent paysages was issued circa 1810–1820, during a period when Everdingen had numerous followers, and his prints were commanding high prices in the market.
The dealer-connoisseur, Rudolph Weigel, revising Bartsch’s catalogue of Everdingen’s prints, in 1843, recognised that the date on the title-page was implausible, and associated the publication with the engraver and printseller Charles Howard Hodges (circa 1764–1837).6 Subsequently, W.E. Drugulin, although unable to locate a set containing the title-page, also suggested a date of issue much later than ‘1696’.7 Observing a ‘Pro Patria’ watermark in the etched ‘frontispiece’ (see Fig. 2), Drugulin proposed a date of ‘vers 1800’.8
Below ‘The Second Spring’ (from the set of ‘Four Mineral Springs’), by Everdingen
Below Everdingen’s ‘The Large Rock at the River’ (after alteration into a night-piece)
The etched frontispiece depicting a pedestal in a landscape, with two rows of bricks on the plinth, a tree stump in left foreground, is signed indistinctly at lower right. Drugulin failed to read the monogram;9 a few years later, Dutuit examined an impression of the frontispiece in the British Museum, in which the monogram could be read as ch.10
The ‘Charles Howard Hodges’ cited by Weigel in 1843 was a mezzotint engraver and printseller, active in Amsterdam from 1788/1794 until his death in 1837, working independently, and also as an export agent for the London printseller William Humphrey. There can be little doubt that he was the publisher of the Everdingen ‘Recueil’: included in the posthumous auction sale of his stock was a lot containing no less than sixteen copies of the book.11 There is no similarity, however, between his engraved work and the ‘frontispiece’ to Recueil de cent paysages, signed ch. The frontispiece may be the work of another Charles Hodges (d. 1846), also an Englishman resident on the Continent (from 1830–1840 in Munich). This ‘Charles Hodges’ is known for twenty-three reproductive prints after Dutch masters, including Everdingen, which he signed with various forms of his initials ch.12
These sets of the prints are known to the writer
● Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Research Library, 301 C 2013 ● Unlocated (Kunstantiquariat Arno Winterberg, Auktion 81, Heidelberg, 6 November 2010, lot 133: incomplete set: 80 prints only, including the engraved ‘frontispiece’) ● Unlocated (formerly in the Verstolk collection)14
references Rudolph Weigel, Suppléments au peintre-graveur de Adam Bartsch. Tome premier, peintres et dessinateurs Néerlandais (Leipzig 1843), p.80; Wilhelm Eduard Drugulin, Allart van Everdingen. Catalogue raisonné de toutes les estampes qui forment son œuvre gravé… Supplément au Peintre-graveur de Bartsch (Leipzig 1873), p.xi, 114; F.W.H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts ca. 1450–1700, 6 (Amsterdam [1952]), pp.153–204
1. The prints are imposed and bound in this order (D.= Dutuit & Hollstein, Everdingen number; H.= Hollstein, Verboom number): Plate 1 [engraved frontispiece], D. 84 – 2 D. 83, D. 95 – 3 [Verboom, H. 2], D. 96 – 4 D. 98, D. 97 – 5 D. 92, D. 87 – 6 D. 93, D. 90 – 7 D. 85, D. 82 – 8 D. 86, [Verboom, H. 1] – 9 D. 71, D. 75 – 10 D. 70, D. 65 – 11 D. 30, D. 28 – 12 D. 72, D. 33 – 13 D. 101, D. 48 – 14 D. 35, D. 55 – 15 D. 54, D. 26 – 16 D. 67, D. 68 – 17 D. 77, D. 40 – 18 D. 51, D. 10 – 19 D. 25, D. 36 – 20 D. 39, D. 17 – 21 D.53, D. 31 – 22 D. 34, D. 32 – 23 D. 76, D. 69 – 24 D. 66, D. 94 – 25 D. 60, D. 61 – 26 D. 57, D. 59 – 27 D. 20, D. 58 – 28 D. 19, D. 56 – 29 D. 29, D. 18 – 30 D. 38, D. 7 – 31 D. 78, D. 88 – 32 D. 50, D. 47 – 33 D. 46, D. 49 – 34 D. 44, D. 73 – 35 D. 45, D. 79 – 36 D. 41, D. 52 – 37 D. 43, D. 80 – 38 D. 74, D. 89 – 39 D. 37, D. 8 – 40 D. 27, D. 9 – 41 D. 62, D. 13, D. 12 – 42 D. 11, D. 23, D. 64 – 43 D. 24, D. 12, D. 22 – 44 D. 16, D. 63, D. 21 – 45 D. 100 – 46 D. 99 – 47 D. 4 – 48 D. 102 – 49 D. 5, D. 1, D. 6 – 50 D. 15, D. 2
2. The earliest compilation of Everdingen’s work (162 prints) is Adam von Bartsch, Le Peintre graveur (Leipzig 1808–1821), ii, pp.157–246; The Illustrated Bartsch, 2 (New York 1978), pp.129–231. Deletions and additions to the oeuvre were made by Rudolph Weigel, Suppléments au peintre-graveur de Adam Bartsch. Tome premier, peintres et dessinateurs Néerlandais (Leipzig 1843); Wilhelm Eduard Drugulin, Allart van Everdingen. Catalogue raisonné de toutes les estampes qui forment son œuvre gravé… Supplément au Peintre-graveur de Bartsch (Leipzig 1873); Eugène Dutuit, Manuel de l’amateur d’estampes (Paris 1881), iv, p.293–382; F.W.H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts ca. 1450–1700, 6 (Amsterdam [1952]), pp.153–204. Elizabeth Mansfeld, ‘Allart van Everdingen’s mezzozint incunabula’ in Print Quarterly 12 (1995), pp.169–178.
3. Everdingen’s matrices may have been included in an estate sale conducted in Amsterdam on 11 March 1676 (no catalogue survives); a second sale, held after the death of his widow, Janneke Brouwers, on 19 April 1709, offered paintings only (Lugt 220; Alice I. Davies, Allart van Everdingen 1621-1675: first painter of Scandinavian landscape, Doornspijk 2001, p.34, and facsimile reproduction of the sale catalogue pp.199–202). The matrices of Everdingen’s Reynard the Fox prints were acquired at auction by the Amsterdam publisher Pieter ii Schenk and passed to Simon Fokke (1712–1784), who reworked them for Gottshed’s illustrated edition of the tale (Leipzig & Amsterdam 1752); see Johannes Hoffman, ‘Allart van Everdingen und Goethes “Reinecke Fuchs”’ in Zeitschrift für Bücherfreunde, Neue Folge, 12 (1920–1921), Heft 9, pp.188–191 (letter to Goethe from Breitkopf, Schenk’s partner in the 1752 edition). It is therefore supposed that Fokke also retouched Everdingen’s landscape prints (cf. Drugulin, op. cit., p.xii).
4. ‘The Large Rock at the River’ (Dutuit/Hollstein 31) was altered into a night piece (see Fig. 4); the circular matrice of ‘The Landscape with the Wooden Bridge’ (D./H. 4) was cut down in the third state to a flat oval (from diameter 195 mm to 163 × 193 mm); and ‘The Brook in the Woods’ (D./H. 101) was reduced from 138 × 187 to 114 × 127 mm.
5. Alfred Wolfgang von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon (Vienna & Leipzig 1906), i, p.498 nos. 1–2; F.W.H. Hollstein, Hollstein’s Dutch and Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts 1450–1700, 35, compiled by Christiaan Schuckman (Roosendaal 1990), pp.202–203 nos. W.1, W.2 (the appearance of these two prints in the Recueil is not recorded); Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabinet, Landscape etchings by the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century, selected, introduced and described by Irene de Groot (London 1979), nos. 224–225; Clifford S. Ackley, Printmaking in the age of Rembrandt (Boston 1981), p.263 no. 182 (W. 1).
6. Weigel, op. cit., p.80: ‘Nous avons vu les 100 planches de notre maître en Hollande chez M. C.H. Hodges qui était autrefois marchand d’estampes et habile graveur; on y avait ajouté le titre suivant gravé, lequel nous semblait être moderne: Recueil de cent Paysages inventés et gravés à l’eau forte par A. van Everdingen. Amsterdam 1696. petit fol.’. Cf. Andreas Andresen, Handbuch für Kupferstichsammler (Leipzig 1870–1873), p.461: ‘Der Kunsthändler Hodges besass 100 Platten und hat seiner Sammlung folgenden modernen Titel vorgesetzt: “Recueil de cent Paysages inventés et gravées à l’eau forte par A. van Everdingen. Amsterdam 1696”’.
7. Drugulin, op. cit., pp.xi: ‘Il est peu probable qu’on ait gravé en 1696 à Amsterdam un titre purement français pour une collection d’eau fortes hollandaises; pour ma part, je n’en ai jamais rencontré d’épreuve. Peut-être M. Weigel a-t-il été trompé par une inscription à la plume sur le frontispice, app.1, de ce catalogue. J’en ai vu de pareilles à différentes reprises’.
8. Drugulin, op. cit., p.114: ‘Ce morceau gravé en imitation du goût de notre maître, se trouve généralement avec la dernière édition de la collection de ses paysages, tirée sur du papier pro patria, bleuâtre ou jaunâtre, vers 1800, à laquelle il sert de frontispiece.’
9. Drugulin, op. cit., p.114: ‘Le monogramme n’en a pas été déchiffré’.
10. Dutuit, op. cit., iv, p.296. Three impressions are in the British Museum: two are ex-collection John Sheepshanks (S.2121 and S.7250); the other ex-collection William Esdaile (1840,0808.235). The monogram ch is not identified in the Museum’s on-line collection datebase.
11. Jeronimo de Vries et al., Catalogus van eene Verzameling fraaije Schilderijen, door oude en hedendaagsche Nederlandsche Meesters. Gekleurde en ongekleurde Teekeningen, gegraveerde, geëstste en andere Prenten, gebonden en losse Prentwerken en Boeken… Meerendeels nagelaten bij wijlen den Heere Charles Howard Hodges, Amsterdam, 27 February, 1838, p.72 (‘Gebonden en losse Prentwerken en Boeken’) no. 35: ‘Recueil de cent Paysages, inventées et gravées à l'eau forte, par A. van Everdingen, Amst. 1696, 16 exempl.’ (link). See generally, A.C.A.W. van der Feltz, Charles Howard Hodges, 1764–1837 (Assen 1982).
12. See Rudolph Weigel’s Kunstlager-Katalog. Zehnte Abtheilung (Leipzig 1841), p.41 no. 11220; G.K. Nagler, Die Monogrammisten (Munich 1860), ii, p.49 no. 136; Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler, edited by Ulrich Thieme und Felix Becker (Leipzig 1924), xvii, p.170.
13. According to the library’s opac, the copy is in octavo format, and ‘Sur feuille 8 une eau-forte par A. Verboom’ (as in our copy; the other Verboom print occurs in our copy on folio 3).
14. A set (?) ‘faisait partie de la collection [Jean Gisbert Baron] Verstolk’ is cited by Dutuit, op. cit., iv, p.296. The prints can not be identified in the catalogues of the Verstolk sales in 1847 (Lugt 18508) and 1851 (Lugt 20277).