In a very large number of cases, I suspect, they were given as presents to any sympathetic soul who had enough taste to appreciate them for their merits, or intelligence enough to foresee that they might some day prove of value. In the case of a portrait, at any rate, we know that he gave proofs to his sitter as the work went on, for on one of the first portrait of Sylvius, done in 1634, there is a note in Rembrandt's hand showing that it was one of four presented by him to the minister.
Others, again, would be given to fellow-artists, such as Lievensz, who etched also. Many undoubtedly came from the sixty portfolios of leather, which we find recorded in the inventory, where they had lain from the day when Rembrandt, having learnt the lesson or attained the effect he desired, had flung them carelessly aside to go on to some further problem. For, there seems little doubt that he never himself regarded them with any very serious consideration. They were for him only steps in his onward progress. He did them because he wanted to do them, without any thoughts of fame or profit, and he signed and dated them, or left them unsigned and undated, in the most haphazard and capricious way, good and bad alike, with the most complete indifference as to whether they were calculated to enhance his reputation or not. It was, therefore, by the inevitable irony of fate, that for these alone, for many years, was he judged worthy of remark. While Gerard de Lairesse in his Groote Schilderboek, published in 1714, was condescendingly assuring a listening public that Rembrandt's paintings were not "absolutely bad," Houbraken was recording the struggles of collectors to get possession of his etchings, and their consequent increase in price—struggles and increasings, which have gone on augmenting without intermission to the present day, until even a small representative collection of them is a luxury for the very rich alone, an absolutely perfect one of all the differing states unobtainable by a many times millionaire.
In the eighteenth century there were already famous collections of the etchings: such as those of de Burgy and van Leyden in Holland itself; of Marolles, Coypel, Silvestre, and Mariette in France; of Barnard, Sloane, Cracherode, Fawkener, and Lord Aylesford in England; and it was inevitable that the making of collections could not go on satisfactorily for long, unless there was some sort of general agreement as to what was and what was not to be included in them, so that before long the need for some catalogue to establish at any rate the preliminary basis of an agreement on disputed points became an absolute necessity.
Gersaint was the first to make the attempt, but died before his task was finished. His manuscript, however, was put up for sale, and bought by les Sieurs Helle and Glomy, as they call themselves upon the title-page of the volume in duodecimo which, after making the "necessary augmentations" of Gersaint's material, they published at Paris in 1751. An English translation of this was published by T. Jefferys in London the following year, and four years later, in 1756, Pierre Yver, an art-dealer in Amsterdam, published in that city a "Supplément," with additions and corrections. Forty years later these two works, collated and again translated into English, were the foundation of an amended catalogue by Daniel Daulby, published in London and Liverpool in 1796. A year later Adam Bartsch, keeper of the prints in the Library at Vienna, published there a catalogue in two octavo volumes, which to this day remains the chief standard of appeal, though Wilson, Charles Blanc, Vosmaer, Middleton, and others, have rejected some of the etchings which he accepted, and included others which he ignored.
CLEMENT DE JONGHE. (B. 272)
(1651)
There is no doubt that Bartsch was too generous in his admissions, but to what extent he carried his over-generosity is still a matter of dispute. The Chevalier de Claussin, writing in 1824, and borrowing freely, though without acknowledgment, from Bartsch, struck out 10, leaving 365; and Wilson, publishing in London in 1836, under the title of "an amateur," while owning his obligations to Bartsch, rejected 6, but added others, making 369. Vosmaer, in 1877, counted 353; Middleton, in the following year, reduced these to 329; Charles Blanc, in the 1880 edition of his work, raised the number again to 353. M. de Seidlitz, in 1890, obtained and collated the opinions of all the best living authorities, and, after an ample discussion of doubtful points, accepted 260; while M. Legros, adopting heroic methods of criticism, will only admit 71 as being certainly by Rembrandt, with an additional 42 which might be, or 113 at the most.
What, it may well be asked by the bewildered amateur, is the reason of these surprising differences? Surely, he may well say, there must be some criterion to hold by. The answer is simple, if unsatisfactory: there is not, there never has been, there never can be. There is no style to judge by; for Rembrandt had half-a-dozen styles at least, and employed them all together or separately as he listed. The signature is no guide, for many beautiful works of his have none, and many that are not his bear forged ones. The subject cannot help us, for he treated alike the most sacred incidents and the grossest improprieties. The merit of the work is no less dubious ground for judgment; for while producing, over and over again, masterpieces of the art that have never been equalled, he at other times, through carelessness, indifference, or perhaps ill-health, turned out and left for future ages stuff which most far inferior men would have obliterated there and then. We can only decide each for ourselves that such or such a plate is in no way worthy of Rembrandt, but, unless we have the courage of M. Legros, we cannot go on to assert definitely that therefore it is not his.
THE THREE TREES. (B. 212)
(1643)