Galerie des Peintres Flamands, Hollandais et Allemands; Ouvrage enrichi de Deux Cent une Planches gravees d'apres les meilleurs Tableaux de ces Maitres, par les plus habiles Artistes de France, de Hollande, et d'Allemagne [...]. Par M. Le Brun. Paris: chez l'Auteur, Pognant, et a Amsterdam chez Pierre Fouquet, 1792-1796, large folios.
A MAGNIFICENT SET OF THE FIRST EDITION OF LE BRUN'S MAGNUM OPUS: ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT BOOKS IN THE HISTORY OF ART, WITH 198 FINELY ENGRAVED PLATES.
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An exceptional first edition set of Le Brun’s magnum opus, a landmark in the history of art criticism, connoisseurship, and the scholarly rediscovery of the Northern schools. This copy is lavishly illustrated with 198 finely engraved plates. The printing of this work was an important moment in the historiography of Dutch and Flemish painting and remains one of the foundational works of Enlightenment art literature.
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Le Brun (1748-1813), dealer, connoisseur, restorer, and husband of Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, was without doubt the preeminent French expert on Northern painting in the decades surrounding the French Revolution. A descendant of Charles Le Brun, he rose to become a major tastemaker in the late ancien-régime and revolutionary France. He was not only an astute businessman and one of the key figures in transforming the European art market, but also a serious scholar whose ideas influenced the formation of the Musée du Louvre and the very structure of modern museology.
In this work, Le Brun surveys 1,350 Northern painters and discusses 157 in detail, arranging them not alphabetically but by geographical school, anticipating later art historical methodology. He gave not only critical analysis of style, technique, and attribution, but also contextual notes on provenance, market value, and rarity, influentially bringing an empirical precision to a discipline then dominated by anecdote and aristocratic taste. His advocacy for overlooked or forgotten artists, most famously Johannes Vermeer, whom he likened to Metsu in quality and price, was central to his intellectual mission. This volume marks the first known printed recognition of Vermeer as a major artist, and Le Brun's framing of him as a découverte heralded a new era of connoisseurial rediscovery.
Le Brun’s work is as much a visual corpus as it is textual, with fine quality engravings used both to document and to aid connoisseurial comparison. As he wrote in his preface, “a serious collector must first and foremost acquire a valid work of art, not merely a famous name.”
This set is bound in magnificent early bindings, being exemplary not only for its completeness and preservation, but also as a testament to the refined bibliophilic culture of post-revolutionary France. Copies are now vanishingly rare on the market.
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Size: 292 x 445 mm (approx., each)
Condition:
[(3), h.t., frontis, t.p., 1ff., a-d2, A-Z2, Aa2, (3)]; [(3), h.t., frontis, t.p., 2ff., A-Z2, Aa-Dd2; h.t., frontis, t.p., 2ff., A-Q2, R1, (3)]
Three volumes bound into two. Contemporary (or very near contemporary) diced calf bindings finely decorated in gilt. Very fine gilt turn-ins with attractive purple silk moiré endpapers. Bindings unsigned. Probably early aristocratic English ownership, by descent in aristocratic collections until recently (probably Moor Park then Bridehead). Spines sunned, bindings a little rubbed, but attractive on the shelf. Both boards securely attached, wear to joints, cracked. Front endpaper to first volume creased. Bookplate to ffep verso. Textually collates as complete, signed in twos. 198 plates in this set (possibly of 201?), frontispieces present in each volume. There are two consecutive gatherings both signed I at the end of the third volume as printed (misprint). Several tissue guards with some tears and loss, many creased. Generally exceptionally bright and clean throughout the text and plates, a few plates toned, sporadic minor spotting, else an excellent copy of this scarce important work.
