Page:The Etchings of Charles Meryon.djvu/36

 LIST OF MERYON'S ETCHINGS

Besides the earliest full catalogue of Meryon's etchings, that by P. Burty, translated into English by M. B. Huish (1879), which derives its value from Burty's Memoir of Meryon and his notes on certain of the etchings, there are two catalogues of Meryon in general use, that written by the late Sir F. Wedmore ("Méryon and Méryon's Paris," 2nd ed., London, 1892) and the much more thorough catalogue by M. Loys Delteil (1907) which forms Tome II. of the series, "Le Peintre-Graveur illustré." The British Museum collection is still arranged in Wedmore's order, which has one practical advantage: it gives precedence to the important works, the etchings of Paris, and describes the other etchings as minor works after these. Thus the visitor, not an expert, who asks for Meryon's etchings and receives the first volume, finds in it at once a number of the masterpieces. He can persevere, if he will, and see the minor works also; but, if he is more easily tired, he will at least have seen the Paris set while his eye is fresh, and will have spent none of his energy on the early experiments. On the other hand, Delteil is not pedantically chronological; he also places the Paris etchings early, by themselves, and groups the remainder, unlike Wedmore, by a subject arrangement, in various classes. By his more scientific description of states Delteil has superseded Wedmore, and is now invariably quoted in sale catalogues. How far even his catalogue is from being exhaustive is proved by the numerous additional states, chiefly based on the examination of the British Museum and Macgeorge collections, which Mr. H. J. L. Wright has described in the July number (1921) of the Print Collector's Quarterly. It is understood that a new edition of Delteil is projected, containing a definitive numeration of the states, in which these and other corrections will be incorporated. The present list attempts no description of states. The titles are given in M. Delteil's order, Wedmore's numbers following in brackets, with the date of each etching and a summary indication of the number of states at present known to exist, quoted from Delteil except where the reference "see Wright" is given.