The Adoration of the Magi. by (ARUNDEL SOCIETY). [Christian SCHULTZ…

Five chromolithograph prints (central panel 395 × 315, two wings 310 × 160, two wing versos 375 × 220 mm), original wooden frames with two hanging loops, gold mounts probably renewed.

The Arundel Societies superb colour printed version of Hans Memling’s Jan Floreins Triptych, copied by Christian Schultz.
The Society was founded in 1849 at a meeting in the house of the painter Charles Eastlake, who became the first Director of The National Gallery, and was named after the Earl of Arundel, collector and patron - a man whom Horace Walpole described as the ‘father of Vertue in England’. The Society saw the progress of art in England as being dependent on popular taste. It was established with the aim to promote a greater knowledge of art through the publication of literary works and high quality reproductions of Italian fresco cycles, classical art and a handful of Northern European masterpieces. John Ruskin was an early member. Many modern British artists who did not travel, including the Pre-Raphaelites, and many collectors and an entire art-hungry class were only familiar with the Old Masters in colour through Arundel Society prints. The Society was discontinued in 1897, when it was overwhelmed by the use of photography.
The prints did not rely on photography and were not made directly from the original paintings. Instead from 1852 skilled copyists were sent out across Europe (by Henry Layard of the Society) to make smaller, very accurate water- and body-colour copies directly from the originals, probably using Windsor and Newton ‘Moist Colours’ in zinc tubes, which had been available from 1846. Each colour used was given its own lithographic stone, and up to 20 stones were drawn upon by hand and printed from to build a composite colour image. Standardising the colours throughout the complex process produced rather saturated but faithful copies, entirely by hand, before colour photography. Perhaps the greatest copyist, Christian Schultz, was also a lithographer.
Memling painted this triptych in 1479 for brother Jan Floreins of the Oud Sint-Janshospitaal in Bruges, where it remains as part of the collection of the Memlingmuseum. He probably depicted himself to the left of the central panel, where he kneels behind a wall, holding an open book. The two panels on the verso of the wings, which are visible when closed, depict John the Baptist and Saint Veronica. The patron’s initials ‘IK’ are visible in the margins and these two panels include a trompe l’oeil lock which visually ‘fastens’ as the triptych is closed - reproduced faithfully in the Arundel copy. The Society made facsimiles of only two Flemish artists: Van Eyck (The Ghent Altarpiece) and Memling (The Lubeck altarpiece and the present Jan Floreins triptych). W. Noel Johnson, A Handbook (Catalogue raisonné) to the Collection of Chromo-lithographs from Copies of important Works of Ancient Masters, published by the Arundel Society: with historical and special artistic Record and Notes (1907) 182-6.