OF

THE WORKS

OF THE MOST EMINENT

DUTCH, FLEMISH, AND FRENCH PAINTERS;

En which is included a short Biographical Notice of the Artists,

WITH A COPIOUS DESCRIPTION OF

THEIR PRINCIPAL PICTURES;

A STATEMENT OF THE PRICES AT WHICH SUCH PICTURES HAVE BEEN SOLD

AT PUBLIC SALES ON THE CONTINENT AND IN ENGLAND;

A REFERENCE TO THE

GALLERIES AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS,

IN WHICH A LARGE PORTION ARE AT PRESENT;

AND THE NAMES OF THE ARTISTS BY WHOM THEY HAVE BEEN ENGRAVED

PUBLISHED BY SMITH AND SON, 137, NEW BOND STREET.

MDCCCXXXVII.

TO SUBSCRIBERS.

THE present work was commenced with a full belief that it would not have extended beyond four, or, at most, five volumes; and under this impression the Writer undertook the task (for such it has proved) of arranging the materials he then possessed, and publishing a volume as an essay. This having been favourably received by the admirers of Art, he was thereby encouraged to proceed in the undertaking. That it has thus extended to eight volumes has been a source of regret, and an augmentation of labour, from which he would gladly have been relieved, could it have been done consistently with his engagements to subscribers, for no recompense of a pecuniary nature which they can bestow, will adequately requite him for it.

To those gentlemen who have so kindly continued to the Writer their support during the nine years he has been engaged in preparing and publishing the work, he begs to offer his unfeigned thanks, and to assure them that a fervent wish to merit the confidence with which they honoured him at its commencement, has at all times excited in him an anxious desire to render the Catalogue a faithful record of the whole of the several masters' productions treated of in the work. But however active, zealous, and enterprising he may have been in collecting the widely scattered materials which compose it, many pictures that should have been recorded are unavoidably omitted; of such, by far the greater portion belong to the painters noticed in the first volume, after the publication of which, every facility was afforded him by possessors of pictures, so that each succeeding part is more perfect than the first. With a view of supplying, at some future time, the omissions here alluded to, it has constantly been the practice of the Writer to make a memorandum of every omitted picture which came under his notice during the prosecution of the work, and these, together with all necessary corrections and observations, will form the contents of a Supplementary Volume.