Cornelis Ploos van Amstel

Estimate

8,000 - 12,000 USD

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Description

Cornelis Ploos van Amstel
An album of 49 prints in imitation of drawings
Etching and aquatint, some printed in color, and in some cases colored by hand;
all except two prints laid down on pages of a 19th-century quarter-leather-bound volume;
table of contents, handwritten in pen and brown ink, on loose sheet of paper inside front of volume

Catalogue Note

Ploos van Amstel was an extraordinary, multi-faceted figure: a passionate collector whose posthumous sales in 1800 took many days, an influential teacher, an accomplished draughtsman, and a great innovator in the field of printmaking.¹ For more than twenty years (beginning in 1765) he devoted great energy and resources to the project to publish a large series of technically very original prints in imitation of drawings. The prints contained in the present volume, published between 1765 and 1781, all belong to this series. Ploos' Prenttekeningen ('print-drawings') of this type were celebrated in their own time for their immensely convincing rendering of the visual effects of drawings, and even today can still prove deceptive.

1. T. Laurentius, Dr. J.W. Niemeijer, and Jhr. G. Ploos van Amstel, Cornelis Ploos van Amstel. Kunstverzamelaar en prentuitgever, Assen 1980