Page:Hofstede de Groot catalogue raisonné, Volume 1, 1908.djvu/16

 x PREFACE copies, and forgeries, and also works by all kinds of painters that have at least a superficial resemblance to the work of the master in question. Only in those cases where a picture noted in a catalogue has been known beyond doubt to be not genuine has it been omitted from the list. The pictures falsely attributed to masters, even in existing collections, have been deliberately omitted, although the compiler is thus exposed to the charge of having left the catalogue incom- plete. He may rebut this charge so far that he would expressly declare that those pictures in museums and private collections evidently visited by him which are reputed to be genuine and yet are here omitted, are regarded by him as unauthentic. Since the wrongly named pictures are far more numerous than the genuine works, the inclusion of them would have made the catalogue unwieldy. Moreover, it is less unpleasant for the private collector to have his pictures passed over in silence than to have them mentioned and definitely described as false. Were the student of art to do this, the doors of all the private collections would soon be closed to him. The inclusion of all the pictures occurring in the sale-catalogues examined has a second great disadvantage in that most of the descriptions are very imperfect. It is only in recent years and on the Continent that the importance of giving exact descriptions of pictures in sale-catalogues has been recognised. In the oldest catalogues complete descriptions seldom occur, and even to-day the largest firm of auctioneers in the world is apparently unable, for reasons of business, to give in its catalogues satisfactory descriptions of the pictures entrusted to it for sale. The descriptions in the sale-catalogues are unfortunately not only incomplete, but also too often inaccurate. How frequently one finds in descriptions that pictures have been wrongly measured, the material on which they are painted wrongly described, the height confused with the breadth, and the position of objects to right or left inaccurately stated ! Even Smith, generally so scrupulous, is often very careless in this last respect. He employs the expressions " right " and " left " as if looking from the picture and not from the spectator's standpoint, but in numerous cases nature is stronger than theory, and he falls into