Treasures From the Collection of Frits Lugt at the Institut Neerlandais, Paris

📙 The name of Lugt has long been familiar in the art world as the author of the Marques de Collections (1921 and 1956), a two-volume dictionary of the marks used by many collectors on the prints and drawings in their possession. It is a bedside book for those keen on the vagaries of taste and its concise sketches of the personalities of collectors provide the basis for any history of the subject. Lugt made a further valuable contribution to such studies with his lists of sale catalogues, the Repertoire des Catalogues de Ventes, 1600-1925, of which the fourth (and final) volume (1900-25) is at the printers. Lugt's investigations presented a more accurate view of the social background of collectors of graphic art than had been possible before his time; they showed that many of the most avid were not exclusively drawn from the ranks of the well born or the well off (though these existed, Prince Eugene and the banker Caylus, for instance), but also came from less exalted circles, including painters or members of the professional classes. The Marques, in fact, is to be neglected at peril; each time it is consulted a reader will almost certainly come across something new.