Willi Kurth - The Complete Woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer

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This Dover edition, first published in 1963, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the edition first published by W. & G. Foyle, Ltd., in 1927. The German text was translated by Silvia M. Welsh.

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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION.

I t is my privilege to introduce to students and collectors of Drers woodcuts a volume of reproductions incomparably better and more complete than any previously existing work of the kind. It is all the more valuable because the woodcuts themselves, which collectors of the eighteenth and nineteenth century insufficiently appreciated, have risen enormously in value in the twentieth. Much greater attention is paid now than formerly to quality; the finest impressions are almost unobtainable and the competition of wealthy private collectors has put museums on their mettle, forcing them to obtain, before it is quite too late, examples worthy to be set before the public in a standard collection. The days are past when the Keeper of a Print Room was content if he had this or that number of Bartsch represented, and did not trouble his head about the quality of the specimen. To collectors who realize how difficult it has become to form a Drer collection, or even to have access to one which is approximately complete, the possession of a volume like Dr. Kurths will be an invaluable aid.

It is a very comprehensive volume, and I do not wish it to be supposed that I regard everything which it contains as being actually the work of Drer. It was in the nineteenth century, after a splendid collection of woodcuts, by many other artists besides Drer, had been given to the British Museum in 1895 by Mr. William Mitchell, that I undertook a careful and critical study of Drer, the results of which were published in 1903, in the first volume of the official Catalogue of Early German and Flemish Woodcuts in the British Museum, pp. 259368. It is a matter of satisfaction to me that this early piece of work has met with wide-spread recognition it will be noted, for instance, that it is quoted constantly by Dr. Kurth in the pages which follow but I do not wish it to be supposed that I now adhere in every particular to my judgments of five and twenty years ago. At that time I was somewhat over-cautious, and scrupled to admit into the canon of accepted works any woodcut which could not be absolutely proved to be by Drer.

I trusted positive external evidence; I distrusted criticism of style. It was my experience, as it has probably been the experience of others, that my opinion vacillated, and that a woodcut, which at one time I was confident in attributing to the master, seemed to me a few weeks later to be more probably the work of a pupil. In such a case, Drer did not get the benefit of the doubt; the woodcut went under the heading School or Doubtful, or was given to Springinklee or to another of Drers pupils or imitators. Later experience has given me, I venture to hope, more confidence in recognising Drers own style and more appreciation of its diversity; it has also lessened my faith in the power of pupils or imitators to produce woodcuts so different from their own signed and authenticated works and so very close to the workmanship of the master. As regards the presence or absence of a signature, Dr. Friedlnder had not then formulated his important distinction between signed cuts, issued by Drer himself, and unsigned work done equally by Drer for other publishers (Der Holzschnitt, 3 rd edition, 1926, pp. 56, 57).

Among woodcuts produced after 1500 which I did not, in 1903, attribute expressly to Drer, I may be permitted to name a few, without attempting an exhaustive list, which I should definitely include in a catalogue of Drers work, if I were writing one. I have not space, and do not wish, in this place to give my reasons. The dates in brackets are those of first publication.