DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.28460#0054
38
Early German and Flemish Woodcuts.
Quality.
.Signatures.
Books in 1900. All the remaining prints of these classes liave been
acqnired by purcliase at varions times since 1837, the date of the
general Inventory of the Printroom. Of tliese purchases by far the
most important was that of part of the famous collection of T. 0.
Weigel of Leipsic ; many of the finest cuts in Difisions A and B
were acquired at the sale of that collection in 1872.
Among more recent acquisitions I may mention that of eleven
dotted prints from the collection of the late Mr. John Malcolm of
Poltalloch, which was purchased as a whole by the Trustees of
the British Museum in 1895.
The collection is inferior both in numbers and in importance to
those at Berlin, Yienna, and Munich. The last named, derived as it
is from the libraries of numerous suppressed convents in South
Germany, is facile yorince'ps among collections of this class of work.
After these three there is no other, with the possible exception of
Paris, with whicli our own collection need fear comparison.
The majority of the primitive woodcuts, liere and elsewliere, are
rude productions, created to meet a popular demand for clieap
devotional art, and lacking the care and finish which an artist
might have given them. Often badly printed and carelessly daubed
witli colour, they haAre little to recommend them except their rarity,
the interest of their subjects and the light which they throw on the
social and religious life of the period.
In exceptional cases, however, the hand of a true artist can be
recognised. The finest single woodcuts of tlie xv century, like the
finest of the blockbooks, were made in the Netherlands about
1455-1465, and show tlie direct influence of the painters of the Yan
Eyck and Eogier van der Weyden school. We have good examples
of this class of work in A 33, 82, 130. Among undoubtedly German
woodcuts, A 26, 65, 90, and D 1 are of unusual excellence. Erom
1486 onwards more definite artistic personalities begin to emerge :
we have book-illustrations designed by known painters in D 20, 23,
24, 35 ; A 143-145 are the work of an original engraver, Mair of
Landsliut, who is better known by his work on copper, and A 129 is
by a remarkable Swiss artist of the close of the century, who may
liave known Diirer’s early work, and who, at any rate, lias caught the
spirit of the new age which Diirer inaugurated.
A few of the earlier cuts bear signatures, the monograms of wood-
engravers, or the names of Briefmaler, of whom nothing, or next to
nothing, is known. Sucli signed cuts are A 46, 73, 125, 147; D 11,
22, 33. The name which occurs on A 17 and A 124, Hans Kurtz,
is that of a poet, not a draughtsman or engraver.
Early German and Flemish Woodcuts.
Quality.
.Signatures.
Books in 1900. All the remaining prints of these classes liave been
acqnired by purcliase at varions times since 1837, the date of the
general Inventory of the Printroom. Of tliese purchases by far the
most important was that of part of the famous collection of T. 0.
Weigel of Leipsic ; many of the finest cuts in Difisions A and B
were acquired at the sale of that collection in 1872.
Among more recent acquisitions I may mention that of eleven
dotted prints from the collection of the late Mr. John Malcolm of
Poltalloch, which was purchased as a whole by the Trustees of
the British Museum in 1895.
The collection is inferior both in numbers and in importance to
those at Berlin, Yienna, and Munich. The last named, derived as it
is from the libraries of numerous suppressed convents in South
Germany, is facile yorince'ps among collections of this class of work.
After these three there is no other, with the possible exception of
Paris, with whicli our own collection need fear comparison.
The majority of the primitive woodcuts, liere and elsewliere, are
rude productions, created to meet a popular demand for clieap
devotional art, and lacking the care and finish which an artist
might have given them. Often badly printed and carelessly daubed
witli colour, they haAre little to recommend them except their rarity,
the interest of their subjects and the light which they throw on the
social and religious life of the period.
In exceptional cases, however, the hand of a true artist can be
recognised. The finest single woodcuts of tlie xv century, like the
finest of the blockbooks, were made in the Netherlands about
1455-1465, and show tlie direct influence of the painters of the Yan
Eyck and Eogier van der Weyden school. We have good examples
of this class of work in A 33, 82, 130. Among undoubtedly German
woodcuts, A 26, 65, 90, and D 1 are of unusual excellence. Erom
1486 onwards more definite artistic personalities begin to emerge :
we have book-illustrations designed by known painters in D 20, 23,
24, 35 ; A 143-145 are the work of an original engraver, Mair of
Landsliut, who is better known by his work on copper, and A 129 is
by a remarkable Swiss artist of the close of the century, who may
liave known Diirer’s early work, and who, at any rate, lias caught the
spirit of the new age which Diirer inaugurated.
A few of the earlier cuts bear signatures, the monograms of wood-
engravers, or the names of Briefmaler, of whom nothing, or next to
nothing, is known. Sucli signed cuts are A 46, 73, 125, 147; D 11,
22, 33. The name which occurs on A 17 and A 124, Hans Kurtz,
is that of a poet, not a draughtsman or engraver.