HOUBRAKEN, Arnold.
De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen. ... Den tweeden druk.
The Hague, Johannes Swart, Cornelis Bouquet, Mattheus Gaillard, 1753. With engraved frontispiece, engraved author's portrait and 47 engraved plates bound in a separate plates volume.
With: (2) GOOL, Johan van. De nieuwe schouburg der Nederlantsche kunstschilders en schilderessen: ...
The Hague, for the author, 1750-1751. With engraved author's portrait and 22 engraved plates (1 folding). Lacking engraved frontispiece. 2 works (in 3 and 2 parts), bound in 11 text volumes (8vo interleaved with 4to, 25.5 x 20 cm) and 2 plate volumes (8vo interleaved with small folio, 28 x 20.5 cm). Uniform late 18th-century half sheepskin parchment (ad 1) and half vellum (ad 2).
€ 12,500
Ad 1: second edition of an important standard work, containing portraits and biographies of Dutch painters of the 17th century. It was intended as a continuation of Van Mander's book on Dutch painters, first published in 1604. The book starts with Desiderius Erasmus, omitted by Van Mander, and ends with painters born between 1635 and 1659, the death of the author preventing a further continuation.
Ad 2: first and only early edition of Van Gool's continuation of Houbraken's, giving short biographies and descriptions of the works of Dutch painters from 1630 to 1725. It also includes a history of the drawing academy in the Hague.
Portraits and biographies of the following female artists are included: Anna Maria van Schurman, Maria Sibylla Merian, Johanna Koerten, Margaretha Wulfraet, Rachel Pool and Henrietta Wolters.
The whole set is interleaved and contains numerous notes by the Belgian art-lover, bibliophile and Rubens connoisseur François-Jean-Joseph Mols (1722-1790), adding many remarks, new stories, anecdotes and corrections. All volumes with his engraved bookplate. Mols owned a magnificent library and a fine art collection.
Both works in very good condition, lacking the frontispiece of the second. Sides of the binding heavily rubbed. Uniformly bound set, with interesting annotations. Graesse III, p. 378; De Man & Höweler, Kunst op schrift 422-424 & 401, 408; for Mols: Linnig, Bibliothèques & Ex-libris d'amateurs Belges (1906), pp. 50-53.
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