BOOK SALES OF THE PAST SEASON BY FRANK RINDER ONE of the results of the commercial depression On March 3-8 the library of the late Sir On April 23 it was demonstrated as never before at auction that the remarkable rise in the moneyvalue of Shakespeare quartos has spread to similar works by other dramatists of the Elizabethan age. Not for long had a set of early quarto plays in comparably fine condition been offered. Most of the pieces were in original sewed state; moreover, in several instances the leaves were uncut, in a few actually unopened. The quartos came from what used to be a fine old library-one which, alas, has suffered decay. Although no single play produced nearly as much as the £300 paid in 1902 for 'The Merry Devill of Edmonton,' 1608, and in the library of Sir Andrew Fountaine, a copy of which had changed hands in 1889 at £14, no fewer than fourteen realized from £50 to £145 each, and twenty of them fetched a total of £1,564. From this fine series came Nos. 9, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 on Table I, where appear details of former prices. It will be observed that four of the plays, containing an aggregate of 119 leaves, brought £485 against £3 11s. 6d. for copies in the Roxburghe library, 1882. One may mention, too, John Day's 'Fair Maid of Bristow,' 1605, £89 (Roxburghe, 'very rare,' £7 10S.); Heywood's Loves Maistresse,' 1636, uncut and unopened, £86 (1821, 2 guineas), and his 'Lawe Trickes,' 1608, £85; Chapman's 'Al Fooles,' 1605, £84 (Roxburghe, 75.); Webster's 'The Malcontent,' 1604, augmented by Marston, £70; Marston's Parasitaster,' £60; Day's 'Ile of Guls,' 1606, £51; and Greene's Tu Quoque,' 1614, £96. Thomas Jolley's copy of this last made £2 9s. in 1843. It was at the sale of Jolley's pictures in 1853 that Mr. Macrory bought for 225 gns. five of the six Laetitia pictures by Morland which on July 9 last realized 5,600 gns. Original state has so little attraction for one collector, into whose library have gone some of the most valuable of the plays, that bindings and not preservative cases for them are contemplated. A On June 22 there occurred the best copy of the 1623 Folio Shakespeare which has come up at auction for two or three years. The title-page and preliminary leaves are 'washed,' but the body of the book is sound, and the rare p. 993 in fine condition. The Folio, which is not in Mr. Sidney Lee's 'Census,' was sold not subject to return for £950, against 5 gns. in 1772. copy of the 1632 Folio, with the Smethwick titlepage, again with all faults,' fetched £250. In 1902 one of the first examples of this variety to which special attention was directed made £690. A good copy of 'Paradise Lost,' first edition, with the first title-page, original sheepskin, brought £295 against £355 for a fine one last year. There have been some exceptions to the downward tendency of books by nineteenth-century 589 Book Sales of the Past Season authors, notably Nos. 2, 10, and 19, Table I. On March 9, at There are other instances. Hodgson's, The Exquisites,' 1839, a farce in two acts with the four lithographic plates coloured, brought £85. A copy, the plates uncoloured, was for long in a country dealer's catalogue at 2s. 6d., under the heading of anonymous drama, but when text and plates had been tentatively ascribed to Thackeray he sent the brochure to Sotheby's, where in 1898 it made £58. On April 21 there occurred apparently for the first time at auction Shelley's rare Vindication of Natural Diet,' 1813. At £83 it is said not to have changed hands. A finer copy, with inscription, belongs to a dealer. 'Omar Khayyam,' 1859, with Mr. G. Meredith's autograph on the original wrapper, brought £39 IOS.; Ruskin's Poems,' 1850, original state, £37; Mr. Swinburne's The Queen Mother and Rosamond,' 1860, with inscription to Théophile Gautier, £32 10s.; and Mr. Meredith's first book, the 'Poems' of 1851, to 'John W. Parker, Esq., with the author's regards,' £30. 6 Few decorative MSS. of note have been offered. On May 3 there were some examples belonging to a well-known connoisseur who limits himself to a hundred specimens, from time to time selling the least good, and the same afternoon an early sixteenth-century Book of Hours, executed in France by Nicholas de Modena, with fifteen fullpage miniatures, brought £720. The bindings include a citron morocco, the sides covered with a richly gilt design of arabesques, executed at Venice for James VI of Scotland, whose arms are in the centre, £75-it would have brought considerably more had not the back lettering been on a separate piece of leather; and Le Temple de Gnide,' 1772, with the plates by Eisen, in old French red morocco by Derome, with the arms of George III and his Queen, £100. In another kind, Mr. H. Clinton-Baker's copy of Watteau's Euvres,' 2 vols., large paper, the Marquis of Bute's arms on the old red morocco, fetched £620. A more ordinary example of this famous work was acquired in the sale of a prominent personage for £40, this by means of what is euphemistically called skilled concerted action, otherwise a' knock-out.' TABLE No. I.-IMPORTANT PRINTED BOOKS NOTES. £ 1,035 Wise & W. 325 Saunders & Otley 4. Homer. Trans. by G. Chapman. John Windet Shield. E.P. 4to., 5. Spenser, E. Faerie Queene. E.P. 2 vols. Old vellum. (437) Headlines slightly shaved, title and last leaf 'washed.' Bought for America by Messrs. B. F. Stevens, who in 1855 sold forty fine Shakespeare quartos to Lenox, New York, for £500. R.P. for a Shakespeare quarto (Former R.P.: 1901, Titus Andronicus,' 1611, £620.) Steevens, 1800, 3gns.; Heber, 1834, £40, re-sold F. Perkins, 1889, £225. On fly-leaf J. Dykes Campbell, Esq., from his obliged & grateful friend, Robert Browning, 19, Warwick Crescent, W., March 6, '86. R.P. About eighty copies printed, some thirteen only traceable. Browning de1884, Pearson cat., mor. by stroyed all possible. Bedford, 15 gns.; 1892, F. Huth cat., presn. from author's father to Reuben Browning, £30; Crampton, 1896, cut, with note in B.'s autograph, £145; 1900, orig. boards, uncut, label, two or three letters wanting, £120, re-sold Arnold, New York, 1901, $600. Mr. Wise's copy has on fly-leaf Kathleen, from her affecte. E(dward) F(itzgerald).' 295 Shakespeare based As You Like It on this, adding three new characters, Jaques, Touchstone, and Audrey. Not in Lowndes or Hazlitt. First edition, 1590, bound with Lyly's Euphues,' 1617, £210, 1901. Heber, 1834, 4 gns.; Seldom occurs at auction. Bright, 1845, 6 gns.; McKee, 1901, t.p. stained, small hole in one leaf, $865. 1904, May 11 (H.), 7×5 ins., mor. by Riviere, £230. B.M. copy has Ben Jonson's autograph. 3. Lodge, Thos. Rosalynde : phues Golden Legacie. 71x 5 in. Unbound. (212) Gubbins Seaven Bookes of the Iliades; Achilles 7×5 in. Old vellum. (295) Large and fine. Blank space on p. 332, and four unpaged leaves of Sonnets. R.P. One page cut in margin. Bysshe, 1679, 6s. 2d.; Dent, 1827, russia, 5gns.; Crampton, 1896, with additional leaves, £85; Gibson Carmichael, 1903, £221. R.P. for a cut copy. Pubd. 3s. Lamb, 1898, orig. state, 9×6 in., 545 gns.; Taylor Brown, 1903, part uncut, £350. Burns Museum, Alloway, paid £1,000 for fine Veitch E.P. Editio princeps. Catalogue numbers, after descriptions, within brackets. (H) (1) Slightly defective. (2) Defective. (3) Sold with all faults. With the rare leaf, The names of the masquers as they sate in the bowre. R.P. Roxburghe, 1812, 12s. 6d. : Gordonstoun, 1816, 1 gn.; Heber, 1834, £1 18s. Sold by Hodgson, all others by Sotheby. R.P. Record price. Book Sales of the Past Season TABLE No. I.-IMPORTANT PRINTED BOOKS-cont. Rare frontispiece by Bought about 1900, £40. R.P. Phiz. 1892, wrappers bound in, £45; Burgess, 1894, frontispiece, mor. by Riviere, £38; 1894, frontispiece, orig. wrappers, £35. Good copy, with orig. drawing of frontispiece by Phiz, bought for £100 a few years ago. R.P. Strettell, 1820, Fine sound copy, slightly stained russia, i gn.; Ashburnham, 1897, old calf, £22 10s.; A great rarity Ford, 1902, mor. by Riviere, £35 10s. in desirable state. Middle Treatise of three translated from Cicero: Of Old Age, Of Friendship, and The Declamation of Noblesse. Complete book: Bernard, 1698, 4s. 2d.; Fairfax, 1756, 2gns.; Roxburghe, 1812, last leaf in MS., £115, now at Chatsworth; Willett, 1813, £210; 'Declamation' only: 1857, £275, now in Huth lib. Ashburnham, 1897, with 'Explicit per Caxton,' £102. Of about twenty-two known copies of complete work, twelve are in English corporate libraries, ten in private hands. R.P. Roxburghe, 1812, 18s.; Rhodes, 1825, £1 25.; Jolley, 1843, £2 13s. No trace at auction for seventeen years. Includes A Particular Entertainment' at Althorp. R.P. There were two editions the same year. R.P. Steevens, 1800, £1 135.; Hibbert, 1829, £2 12s. 6d.; Crawfurd, 1864, £3 125.; 1888, mor., £18; 1902, £31. Alludes to Spenser, 'A sweeter swan than ever song in poetry;' and 'Why heres our fellow Shakespeare put them all doune, I and Ben Jonson too.' R.P. Roxburghe, 1812, 75.; Field, 1827, £1 4s.; Fountaine, 1902, with 'May Day,' 1611, £62 10s. 106 Top plain margin of title cut off. Rare, perhaps unique. Pubd. anonymously during Wesley's mission to Georgia. 1889, possibly same copy, £20 10s. Bought for £45 four or five years ago. R.P. Pubd. £1. Turner, 1888, £23 55.; Sinclair, 1890, £18 5s.; Wright, 1899. £38 10s.; 1902, some plates foxed, £62 1os., all in orig. parts. Peter Kaetz, whose device is on the title, was a wellknown London and Antwerp bookseller. Excessively rare. Letter defective in corner of CLIII. 13. Dekker, T. The Whore of Baby lon. E.P. 4to., 40 l., uncut. For Nath. 1607 April 23 120 Unbound. (1133) 14. Jonson, Ben. King James, his V. S(ims) for 1604 April 23 .. Entertainment. E.P. 4to., 2911., E. Blount E.P. bound. (1151) 33 ll., uncut. uncut. Unbound. (1143) 15. Marston, John. What You Will. 4to., 31 ll., uncut. 16. The Returne from Pernassus. 4to., Un Unbound. (1163) John Wright Catalogue numbers, after descriptions, within brackets. On Table II. appear details of some of the many high-priced autograph letters, poems, etc., recently sold. TABLE II.-ORIGINAL MSS., AUTOGRAPH 1. Nelson, Lord. Letter (? last complete) to Lady (H) Sold by Hodgson, all others by Sotheby. R.P. Record price. 8. Burns, R. The Brigs of Ayr. Early draft on 71 Price. £ 200 169 155 150 Price. £ 1,030 2. Burns, R. Cotter's Saturday Night. 21 stanzas of 9 lines. Aiken (629) 500 Shakespeare's Works, 1747. Emendations and marginal notes by Dodd. July 29 (265) 150 130 3. Bunyan, J. Warrant for Apprehension, March 15, 1674. Bought at Dr. Chauncy's sale, about £2 10s. Thorpe (1059) 4. Chatterton, T. Fine collection of Poems, etc. Since presented by Mr. G. White to Bristol Museum. Sholto Hare (283) 5. White, Rev. G., of Selborne. 79 Letters, 1770-91; 52 to his niece, Mary White, 27 to his brother, Rev. John White of Black burn. April 21 (805-6) 6. Tennyson, Lord. Enid and Nimuë. Proof sheets, 139 pp., corrected by author. Lady Simeon (694) 13. Cromwell, O. Letter to his wife, September 4, 1650. 121 119 From libraries of 294 Edmund Spenser and Gabriel Harvey. With 102 16. 291 210 Wellington, Duke of. Letter to Sir Charles Flint, 17. White, Rev. G., of Selborne. 19 letters to his ΙΟΥ ΙΟΥ Lady of the Lake,' 1897, £1,290, and twenty-nine letters by Keats, 1903, £1,070. In 1897 Nelson's autograph memoir of his birth, life, and services went for £1,000, as compared with which the single letter to Lady Hamilton looks extraordinarily dear. Burns continues in favour, No. 2 being an amazingly high price for a poem of 189 lines. No. 6 is a Tennyson record at auction, although privately Mr. Wise has paid £600 for the rare Lover's Tale,' with corrections by the author. BIBLIOGRAPHY L'EXPOSITION DES PRIMITIFS FRANÇAIS AU POINT DE VUE DE L'influence des frères VAN EYCK sur la Peinture FRANÇAISE ET PROVENÇALE. Par Georges H. de Loo. 52 pp. Gand, 1904. THIS essay should be carefully read by all students of the history of painting in the fifteenth century. To its author's vigorous denunciation of the neglect by the French of their early paintings we are indebted for the recent remarkable exhibition at Paris. Stung by his words at the Bruges Congress of 1902 and by the success of the exhibition of early Netherlandish pictures, M. Henri Bouchot determined to try to bring together in Paris a collection of paintings which should demonstrate the existence of an independent French school. To his zeal and activity not only the French, but all who are interested in the critical study of mediaeval painting, are greatly indebted. His patriotic enthusiasm has, however, led him to class as French a large number of works which cannot possibly be accepted as evidence of the existence of a French school of painting in the fifteenth century. So far, indeed, from such being the case, they prove that pictorial art in France after 1420 was either the work of Low Country masters or of French craftsmen who had become their pupils and imitators. The exhibition included four genuine pictures of the early French school: (1) the portrait of King John II, c. 1359; (2) a Lenten mitre, c. 1360; (3) the Narbonne altarpiece, c. 1375; and (4) the portrait of Louis II, Duke of Anjou, c. 1415, the last being the only painting of the fifteenth century which can be looked on as purely French. Of the others, most are the works of Netherlanders working for or in France; some few, such as those by John Fouquet of Tours, and the master of the Moulins altarpiece, are by French artists whose technique and style are derived indirectly from the Van Eycks, whilst the works of Nicholas Froment and the painters of Provence show a mixed Netherlandish and Italian influence. In France, as in England, the old mediaeval schools had died out, and the art of painting was revolutionized by the Van Eycks and their followers. M. de Loo justly remarks that of the four paintings attributed to John Malouel not one can be proved to have been painted by him, and that if the Pietà (15) be his work, which there are reasonable grounds for believing, the others are certainly not by him, and that one of them, representing episodes from the legend of St. Denys (16), is almost certainly by Henry Bellechose of Brabant, to whom he attributes the Pietà (14) of the Troyes Museum. As to the portraits, the author calls attention to the system which prevailed in France before 1420, and in Italy even much later, of painting portraits in profile, having regard only to form and relying chiefly on the effect of the outline. One of the Van Eycks' greatest innovations was the pourtray. ing of people with their faces seen in threequarters with contrasts of light and shade; all such fifteenth-century portraits, no matter whereever painted, are due to Netherlandish influence, direct or indirect. The distinctive characteristics which mark off and separate the art of Hubert van Eyck and his followers from that of the earlier school are thus clearly defined by M. de Loo :— "C'est d'une façon générale, une analyse plus exacte, plus profonde, de l'aspect visuel de la nature: non seulement de la forme et de la couleur propre des choses, mais, et ceci est l'innovation essentielle, les yeux se sont ouverts à la perception des valeurs lumineuses, et, par suite, à la perspective aérienne; c'est la conquête de la troisième dimension de l'espace; c'est le jeu des lumières et des ombres; des demi-tons et des reflets; c'est les relief et le volume des corps; c'est encore le paysage étendu, avec toutes ses différences d'éclairage, y compris les rayons du soleil!" It was, speaking generally, a more exact and searching analysis of the visual aspects of nature, not only of the form and proper colour of objects, but, and this is the essential innovation, their eyes were opened to the perception of luminous values, and, as a consequence to aerial perspective; to a mastery of the third dimension of space, the rendering of the play of light and shade, of half-tones and reflections, of the relief and volume of objects, to the extent of landscape with all its varieties of light, including even the rays of the sun. This was the discovery of Hubert van Eyck, and justifies our looking on him as out and away the greatest master of his time. To these improvements John added a deeper and more searching study of the human figure, painting from the model posed before him, and treating the draperies when falling on the ground in a novel manner; whenever these are represented with angular broken folds they are evidence of the influence of John, direct or indirect. The finest paintings executed in France in the middle of the fifteenth century are, according to M. de Loo, the twenty angels which adorn the vaulting of the chapel in the mansion of James Cœur at Bourges; these were executed before 1453 by an unknown artist who had evidently been trained by a Netherlandish master. John Fouquet of Tours-a thoroughly French craftsman whose works, by the architectural details introduced and by the system of decoration employed, show that he had sojourned in Italy-is often spoken of as a master painting under Italian. influence, but, as the author well remarks, the school to which a master belongs is not shown by the objects reproduced, but by the manner in which they are understood and represented. No one would for a moment look on Fromentin or Descamps as having learnt anything from Arab or Turkish painters from the fact that their paintings include representations of Eastern and Algerian buildings. Fouquet's portraits show no sign of Italian influence, but clearly that of the Netherlandish school. They are all painted according to the Eyckian formula in three-quarters with strong contrasts of light and shade. Fouquet aimed, however, at imparting style and a decorative character, making much use of gold, and systematically painting male figures with brownish red, and women, children, and angels with colourless flesh tones. When the person pourtrayed is accompanied by a patron saint he did not follow van Eyck's system of placing the saint as a protector behind his client, but a little in front with a hand on the client's shoulder as if introducing him; this system M. de Loo thinks was not merely adopted but invented by Fouquet. The fine portrait of a canon protected by Saint Victor, which the author attributes, I think on insufficient grounds, to John Perréal, is an instance of this arrangement. M. de Loo devotes special attention to two portraits attributed at Paris to Fouquet, the man holding a glass of wine (43) and a knight of the order of Saint Michael (51) which M. Bouchot considers to be the masterpiece of the Tours master and one of the finest paintings produced in the fifteenth century by any school. To my mind there is a marked difference between these and the portraits painted by Fouquet, and I think M. de Loo proves them as certainly as possible, in the absence of documentary evidence, to be the work of a close follower of John van Eyck, settled in France. The Annunciation (37) he believes to have been painted by a master trained in the Netherlands but working in Provence, to my mind more probably at Basel or in Burgundy. M. de Loo's conjecture that Conrad Witz may have come under his influence appears probable; I had made a similar remark when at Paris in May, but Witz never lost his Suabian character. I have dwelt so much at length on this valuable essay that I cannot do more than Bibliography call attention to its author's remarks on the Resurrection of Lazarus (81) of the von Kaufmann collection, and the paintings of Nicholas Froment and those of Enguerrand Charenton and the Provençal painters. W. H. J. W. DEUTSCHE SCHMELZARBEITEN DES MITTELALTERS, VON OTTO VON FALKE UND Heinr. FRAUBERGER-fol. Frankfurt am Main, 1904 (pp. 151. pl. 130 in collotype and 25 coloured). THE Düsseldorf Exhibition in 1902 was one of which any country might well be proud. While showing on the one hand the immense strides that Germany has made in industrial processes, it was the means of bringing together certain treasures of her artistic past, such as had never before been seen under one roof. The glory of the exhibition from this point of view of retrospective art was undoubtedly the splendid series of early enamels, chiefly of German origin, that the managers of the exhibition had contrived to borrow from museums and cathedral treasuries as well as from private collectors. Most of the principal monumental objects had been well known to specialists and were duly chronicled in Baedeker, but to inspect reliquaries and other works of art in the uncertain light of a sacristy is a very different thing from seeing the same objects in the well-lighted galleries at Düsseldorf. It was an obvious suggestion that a permanent record should be made. of the more important of these monuments of art, and this Dr. von Falke and Dr. Frauberger have fully provided in this handsome volume. Both in plates and text it compares very favourably with the similar volume brought out by the Burlington Fine Arts Club after the exhibition of European enamels; the text, moreover, is printed in Roman type, and not in antiquated black letter that still disfigures so many German publications. The authors explain in a prefatory note that it was a matter of some hesitation whether to make the volume a record of all the classes of works of art in the exhibition; but there can be little doubt they have chosen the better method in confining it mainly to the mediaeval enamels for which the Rhine is pre-eminent, while including a few of the more remarkable objects in other classes. This plan has furnished Dr. von Falke with an opportunity for producing an admirable monograph on German enamelling in the middle ages. German writers on art were formerly reproached, and with justice, for ignoring the art of their own country, but the last few decades have seen a change in this respect; and while the classical periods and countries receive their due share of German energy, the fatherland is not neglected. The impression produced on the mind by an examination of the handsome plates of the volume before us is that of a sturdy conscientious art, characterized rather by solidity and painstaking |