Catalogue d'une belle collection des dessins italiens, flamands et françois [...] le tout rassemblé avec soins & dépenses, par M. Neyman, Amateur à Amsterdam; dont la vente se fera à Paris, vers la Fin du Mois de Juin 1776 [...] Par Fr. Basan [...]

Bookseller Notes

The illustrated catalogue for an auction of 1551 works - mainly by seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish masters - held by the renowned Parisian print dealer Pierre Franois Basan (1723-97). A trained engraver, Basan produced handsome catalogues with quality illustrations of sale highlights. There are fourteen such here, including various grotesque figures by Adriaen van Ostade, studies of quadrupeds by Paulus Potter, and landscapes by Adriaen van de Velde. As the collection of a connoisseur from Amsterdam it is unsurprising that the auction should be so rich in works from the Dutch and Flemish schools; not only was the artistic output of the Low Countries notably prolific in the seventeenth centuries, but the Dutch were great buyers of domestic artwork. This is a serious collection, works from which are to be found in institutions including the Getty and Louvre.Basan was the protege of and natural successor to Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694-1774), the pre-eminent art dealer of mid eighteenth-century Paris. It was a succession he emphasised later in 1776, when he orchestrated the sale of Mariette's own superb collection of French Italian and Flemish artists, and for which he issued a catalogue similar to the present work. Basan is also known as the author the Dictionnaire des Graveurs anciens et modernes' (1767), a biographical work which is still referenced today.See: