In the eighteenth century there were already famous collections of the etchings: such as those of de Burgy and van Leyden in Holland itself; of Marolles, Coypel, Silvestre, and Mariette in France; of Barnard, Sloane, Cracherode, Fawkener, and Lord Aylesford in England; and it was inevitable that the making of collections could not go on satisfactorily for long, unless there was some sort of general agreement as to what was and what was not to be included in them, so that before long the need for some catalogue to establish at any rate the preliminary basis of an agreement on disputed points became an absolute necessity.
Gersaint was the first to make the attempt, but died before his task was finished. His manuscript, however, was put up for sale, and bought by les Sieurs Helle and Glomy, as they call themselves upon the title-page of the volume in duodecimo which, after making the "necessary augmentations" of Gersaint's material, they published at Paris in 1751. An English translation of this was published by T. Jefferys in London the following year, and four years later, in 1756, Pierre Yver, an art-dealer in Amsterdam, published in that city a "Supplément," with additions and corrections. Forty years later these two works, collated and again translated into English, were the foundation of an amended catalogue by Daniel Daulby, published in London and Liverpool in 1796. A year later Adam Bartsch, keeper of the prints in the Library at Vienna, published there a catalogue in two octavo volumes, which to this day remains the chief standard of appeal, though Wilson, Charles Blanc, Vosmaer, Middleton, and others, have rejected some of the etchings which he accepted, and included others which he ignored.
[Illustration: CLEMENT DE JONGHE. (B. 272)
There is no doubt that Bartsch was too generous in his admissions, but to what extent he carried his over-generosity is still a matter of dispute. The Chevalier de Claussin, writing in 1824, and borrowing freely, though without acknowledgment, from Bartsch, struck out 10, leaving 365; and Wilson, publishing in London in 1836, under the title of "an amateur," while owning his obligations to Bartsch, rejected 6, but added others, making 369. Vosmaer, in 1877, counted 353; Middleton, in the following year, reduced these to 329; Charles Blanc, in the 1880 edition of his work, raised the number again to 353. M. de Seidlitz, in 1890, obtained and collated the opinions of all the best living authorities, and, after an ample discussion of doubtful points, accepted 260; while M. Legros, adopting heroic methods of criticism, will only admit 71 as being certainly by Rembrandt, with an additional 42 which might be, or 113 at the most.