The Wolff Collection. Master Drawings and Prints. / International Auction 879. Bruun Rasmussen.

Pictorial wrappers, very fine. With a few prices written in ink. Copenhagen 2018. 4to. 28 x 19,4 cms. 176 pp. 135 catalogue entries, illustrated throughout. With an introduction about Benjamin Wolff (1790-1866), "An Amateur and Collector". / Text in English. After a twelve-year posting in 1817-1829 with the English trade agency Cruttenden, Mackillop & Co. in India, the Danish lawyer and avid art collector Benjamin Wolff (1790-1866) returned to Denmark as a wealthy man and acquired Engelholm Manor south of Copenhagen. Over the course of 30 years, Wolff assembled an extraordinary collection of drawings ranging from 16th century Old Masters to 19th century Danish Golden Age. Except for a national bequest in 1915 and two minor exhibitions in the 1980s, the corpus of the collection, numbering over 2,000 drawings, remained in the family since Wollf's death in 1866, intact and unpublished for five generations. - - - Wolff, a zealous administrator and an avid traveler, is known to have purchased drawings when abroad. Of noteworthy mention is a collection of drawings by the German neoclassical painter Johan Zoffany - one highlight being an intriguing self-portrait. The majority, however, including a fine collection of Mannerist drawings and prints, were acquired at auctions in Copenhagen, including the estate sales of the following: The art collector and Keeper of the Kunstkammer J.C. Spengler (1839), the art collector and architect Gottfried Schaper (1853), the Danish Golden Age painter C.W. Eckersberg (1854) and the art collector, High Commissioner of War and auctioneer Johan Christian Fick (1866).…