Page:Hofstede de Groot catalogue raisonné, Volume 2, 1909.djvu/9

PREFACE As to the contents of this, the second, volume, I have little to add to what I said in the preface to the first. This volume is devoted to the painters of landscape with figures, Aelbert Cuyp and Philips Wouwerman. I had intended to include Adriaen van de Velde and Paulus Potter also in this volume, but the descriptive catalogues of Cuyp's and Wouwerman 's works have run to such a length that I have had to change my plan. Van de Velde and Potter, although the catalogues of their works are finished, must therefore be deferred to a later volume in which masters who are akin to them in style will accompany them. As I said in the preface to the first volume, I have not noticed pictures in museums and private collections which I do not regard as originals. I have omitted them partly to keep the work within reasonable limits, partly also to spare collectors the pain of seeing their pictures described as unauthentic. Unfortunately it has come to my knowledge that many private collectors are annoyed even at finding that my notes on the quality and condition of their pictures are, as may naturally happen, not altogether full of praise. Thus I have been compelled as far as possible to suppress such criticism, so as not to risk depriving myself of the indispensable co-operation of collectors, without which the completion of the enterprise would be to some extent involved in doubt. In regard to the question whether a particular picture is an original or not, I have, of course, continued to give a conscientious