REMBRANDT VAN RIJN Recueil de Quatre-Vingt-Cinq Estampes Originales.
Collection of 62 etchings by Rembrandt and 27 etchings after or in the manner of Rembrandt, 1630-58. Each with small margins and mounted at the 4 corners verso to larger sheets, as issued. Published by H. L. Basan, Rue et Hôtel Serpente, no. 14, Paris, with the original title page.
According to Usticke, this is the second edition issued by Basan and published around 1807-08. Basan's title page claims that the work contained 85 etchings by Rembrandt from his original plates and 35 etchings made by others after or in the manner of Rembrandt. Usticke accounts for a maximum of 81 etchings by Rembrandt in any of the Basan Recueil. The original Rembrandt etchings in the Basan Recueil, as this collected edition is known, were printed from plates that had been assembled in Paris by 1789 (when they were first issued in a collection by Pierre François Basan, presumably the father of H. L. Basan). This large group of Rembrandt etchings was issued several subsequent times after the Basan editions: around 1810 by the Parisian publisher Auguste Jean, by his widow around 1825, by Michel Bernard around 1846 and finally by Alvin Beaumont in 1906.
These collections are scarce in any issue; we have found only 15 other Basan Recueil (both complete and incomplete) at auction in the past 25 years.
