WORKING THE COLLECTION

Rembrandt’s etchings, as a body of work, inspired the catalogue raisonné

Rembrandt created some 300 different etchings, which may be divided into various classes, such as landscapes, portraits, and religious. Many of the prints were made in successive states of finish. It all cried out for organization, in the Age of Reason. Hence the Catalogue raisonné de toutes les pieces qui forment l’œuvre de Rembrandt, by Edme-François Gersaint, published in 1751, the first of all catalogue raisonnés. The catalogue was based on the collection of Dutch painter and art historian Arnold Houbraken, whose passion was Rembrandt and the Dutch Golden Age of one hundred years earlier.

Gersaint was an art dealer for whom the catalogue helped authenticate and monetize the provenance of the prints he bought and sold. Perhaps he (or Houbraken) took the idea from the Systema Naturae (1735) of Carl Linnaeus. At any rate, taxonomy was in the air, and Rembrandt’s prints were promising material, to be listed by class, size, date, content and state, while also referred to in the accompanying biography of the artist’s triumphs and tragedies. Gersaint’s Rembrandt was not, however, illustrated.

Today, the typical form of a catalogue raisonné comprises: 1) An artist’s life in words, 2) Their life in pictures, and 3) Their life in metadata (in a broader sense than digital). After this data has been compiled and organized, it becomes an object for acquisition—of knowledge, as much as of artefact. While “Complete Works” may not be as concentrated an experience as “Biggest Hits”, it is nonetheless substantial both physically (when fully illustrated) and intellectually.

Peintre Gravure by Adam Bartsch, published in the early 19th century, was an influential model for print catalogues. Originally without illustrations (they being prohibitively expensive at the time), its text is very much an objective substitute for the visual, and this is its merit in the business of provenance.

Rembrandt: Etchings (c.1960) contains a brief biography of Rembrandt, reproductions of 272 of his etchings, as well as the compact typography (see above) that annotates each by size, year, and rather dry verbal description—following Bartsch closely, but dropping any judgement as to quality. The relationship between these plain, technical texts and their subject images bears comparison with that between AI prompts and their generated imagery. The shared assumption is that for words to be an impartial description of an image, they must tap into common and conventional wisdom. Nothing fancy or idiosyncratic. Resonance also exists with the text-based, conceptual aspect of modern art, such as Moholy-Nagy’s Telephone Picture of 1923, and Lawrence Weiner’s Statements of 1968. Also, the trope of documentation. In 20th century literature, the unadorned style was favoured by Hemingway, and in poetry, the Imagists. The alphanumeric coding refers to cataloging by other experts—Hind and Bartsch—similar to the manner in which Mozart’s work is documented by Köchel number.

THE THREE TREES
H.205 B.212 1643 210/279 mm.
On a bank, to the right, is the group of three trees, which give a name to the piece; below them, occupying the foreground, is a pond or sheet of water, on the farther side of which is a fisherman, with a woman seated near him; and to the right, half concealed by the dark foliage, two other figures can with difficulty be discovered. In the left distance, beyond a plain divided into meadows in which are peasants and cattle, are the spires and higher buildings of a town; while, to the right, on the rising ground beyond the trees, are other buildings and a waggon full of people; on the highest point, still nearer the right, is seen a little seated figure. The sky above and to the left is covered with clouds from which a smart shower is falling.
—Anon., after Bartsch. Rembrandt: Etchings, c.1960.

Harold J. L. Wright

The introduction to Rembrandt: Etchings was written by Harold Wright (1885–1961), a latter day Gersaint. He began as an art dealer in London at age 18, working at Obach, which merged in 1911 with Colnaghi, where he became a director in 1939. That put him at the centre of the art market, Colnaghi being the oldest commercial gallery in Europe, prosperous, progressive, and well connected. Wright specialized in works on paper and, despite lacking an academic degree, was a leading authority and critic, writing and speaking on the subject of prints and collecting. He’d handled and inspected a fair number of masterpieces, observed their comings and goings in auctions and galleries, and knew his stuff intimately. He was an ardent bibliophile and printophile, if there is such a thing, amassing a huge personal collection, and that’s what made him tick. At his death, his 3,700 prints and 30,000 books were bequeathed to Melbourne University.

Wright’s bookplate, a wood engraving, was made in 1943 by his great friend, fellow critic and Rembrandt enthusiast, Australian artist Lionel Lindsay.

Wright had championed Lindsay’s work, and Lindsay in turn was a client of Wright’s. The bookplate imagines a moment, real and/or symbolic, when Lindsay, in Wright’s posh old library, glass of port close at hand, has just received The Three Trees and been instructed to train his attention upon a small object on the horizon, half-obscured by the tree to the right; “Why yes, I see it now, a waggon-load full of people!” Wright looks on proudly; noblesse oblige.

The caption “Bouvard et Pécuchet” is the title of Flaubert’s final novel, its two protagonists the focus of an episodic satire on the acquisition of knowledge, a couple of journeymen become intellectual gadflies, aspiring connoisseurs of the finer things.

Aware, no doubt, of Daumier’s many depictions of bourgeois print collectors, Lindsay’s engraving affectionately doubles down on the antiquarian nerdiness of the old geezers’ pursuit. I like that, and note that the bookplate was printed exactly 300 years after the etching it shows. ●