Page:Chats on old prints (IA chatsonoldprints00haydiala).pdf/94

 *ment of texture is exquisite. This brings a couple of pounds in fair condition. There is a set of Sea Shells done with minute exactitude and great delicacy, over forty in number, which may be procured for a five-pound note. A set of Butterflies of microscopic detail, twelve in number, can be bought for 15s.

Out of the two thousand odd engravings by Hollar it is not difficult for the beginner to pick up for a few shillings some good specimens of his work. As a word of warning it may be said that of late years a great number of photographic reproductions and forgeries have appeared on the market. They are of fine, smooth paper, and very thin. After handling a score or so of prints done on old paper of the seventeenth century and holding the paper up to the light to see its characteristics, the beginner ought not to be caught napping by these German forgeries sold at second-hand booksellers' shops and by minor printsellers for a shilling apiece. Sometimes as much as half a sovereign is asked for a "rare" print which has its fellow in the drawer behind the counter ready for the next customer.

Of Sir Anthony Vandyck as an etcher we shall have as little to say as of other masters with the needle. Their prices are beyond the reach of the beginner. Claude Gelée, called Lorraine, is equally without the pale of the novice's first flight. Claude stands pre-eminent among French landscape etchers. His Liber Veritatis, a collection of some three hundred drawings, was engraved by Earlom a hundred years after Claude's death in 1682.

Etchings of the Italian school from Annibal