Samuel De Swaef to Jan Thesing - Volume XXIX

Compiled by Dieuwke De Hoop Scheffer, George S. Keyes and Ger Luyten; edited by K. G. Boon.

Publishing: Blaricum, van Gendt, c1984.

Physical description: 214 p.: ill.; 27 cm.

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

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.