François Schillemans to J. Seuler - Volume XXVI

Compiled by Dieuwke De Hoop Scheffer; edited by K. G. Boon.

Publishing: Amsterdam, van Gendt, c1982.

Physical description: 256 p.: ill.; 27 cm.

Taken from the series: Hollsteinʼs Dutch & Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts, ca. 1450-1700.

Hardcover. As new, still in original box.. Darkest siena stamped cloth, gilt letters on spine; light green paper dust jacket in mylar cover; 256 pp., many BW illus. The 26th volume of an eventual 72-volume set providing details about the lives and works of Dutch and Flemish artists who produced prints, etchings, engravings and woodcuts during the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. This volume approaches them alphabetically from Francois Schillemans (Schellemans, active 1616-1620) to J. Seuler (active 1693).

When the first volume of the reference work on Dutch and Flemish print­making that has become known as “Hollstein” was published in 1949 no one could expect that it should take more than 60 years to reach the end with the publication of index volumes. It was the initiative of Friedrich Wilhelm Hollstein (1888-1957), a Berlin print dealer and auctioneer who was forced by circumstances to leave Germany in 1937 and moved to Amsterdam. He must have been an optimistic man: he calculated that he would need 25 volumes to catalogue the entire production of prints from 1450 to 1700. Fourteen volumes had seen the light of day by the time he died in 1957, and it was due to the intervention of the Rijksprentenkabinet, and of Karel G. Boon in particular, and the book publishers Menno Hertzberger, A.L. van Gendt, Koninklijke Van Poll, and Sound & Vision Publishers, who believed in the project and were prepared to invest in it, that the series was continued. Slowly the standard of the print descriptions improved, and the series was completed thanks to the dedication and involvement of the late Mrs Dieuwke de Hoop Scheffer and her successors. It took another 53 years to finish the series, which now has reached the end in 72 volumes.