OLD MASTER DRAWINGS. By Henry Scipio Reitlingers. (Constable and Co.
86s. net.) OLD MASTER DRAWINGS. By Henry Scipio Reitlingers. (Constable and Co. 86s. net.)
Mr. Reitlingers's book will be disappointing if it is glanced at casually, and judgment is unhappily often passed on volumes of repmductions that have been considered only in this way. Perhaps Mr. Reitlingers's title is a little at fault. Until we have realized from reading the introduction what purpose his book is to serve, we are naturally baffled by the Comparatively unimportant works -reproduced. But his aim is not to show the best that the old masters could do, but the quality of drawings that a collector with a moderate income is likely to be able US find and acquire. At least, that one purpose, aid the result must be encouraging to the collector. A carefuj study of the drawings reproduced will retail sound -aesthetic qualities in every one of them, and if We can _lower the standards which tie title and handsorde .appCarance of the book has first set Iu our minds, we shall find it altogether delightful. Mr. Reitlingers is one of those rare collectors with true artistic sensitiveness. Again and again in his introduction he emphasizes the neglected fact that a thing is worth collecting for its (Am sake and not for the Sake of collecting. He is scholarly without Making
scholarship an end ; attribution interests him, but the
drawings interest him more. It is sometimes believed that all condemnation of the " expert " is based on a laziness which dreads the labour of becoming an "expert." Mr. Reitlingers proves, and fortunately he is not the only example, that the art collector may, in spite of so many witnesses to the con- trary, be on a plane above the stamp collector ; that sound knowledge may go with (but subordinately) a sincere appre- ciation, and that a collector may be found who ignores rarity and attribution as reasons for buying. In the sub-title to his book Mr. Reitlingers has described it as "A Handbook for Amateurs and Collectors." As an introduction to the study or collecting of old drawings it is of the greatest value.
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