Hercules Pieterszoon Seghers or Segers ( 1589 – 1638) was a Dutch

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ...

and

printmaker Printmaking is the process of creating work of art, artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand proce ...

of the

Dutch Golden Age The Dutch Golden Age ( nl, Gouden Eeuw ) was a period in the history of the Netherlands, roughly spanning the era from 1588 (the birth of the Dutch Republic) to 1672 (the Rampjaar, "Disaster Year"), in which Dutch trade, science, and art and ...

. Segers is in fact the more common form in contemporary documents, and was used by the painter himself (modern use is about equally divided between the two): Neil MacLaren, ''The Dutch School, 1600–1800, Volume I'', National Gallery Catalogues, p. 418-20, 1991, National Gallery, London, He has been called "the most inspired, experimental and original landscapist" of his period and an even more innovative printmaker.

Life

Hercules was born in

Haarlem Haarlem (; predecessor of ''Harlem'' in English) is a city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland. Haarlem is situated at the northern edge of the Randstad, one of the most populated metropoli ...

, as the son of a

Mennonite Mennonites are groups of Anabaptist Christian church communities of denominations. The name is derived from the founder of the movement, Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland. Through his writings about Reformed Christianity during the R ...

cloth merchant, originally from Flanders, who moved to

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...

in 1596. There Hercules was apprenticed to the leading Flemish landscapist of the day

Gillis van Coninxloo Gillis van Coninxloo (now also referred to as Gillis van Coninxloo II but previously referred to as Gillis van Coninxloo III) (24 January 1544 – January 1607) was a Flemish painter of landscapes who played an important role in the development ...

, but his apprenticeship was presumably cut short by Coninxloo's death in 1606. Seghers and his father bought a number of his works at the auction of the studio contents, as Pieter Lastman did. Seghers' father died in 1612, after which he returned to Haarlem, joining the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke. He returned to Amsterdam in 1614 to obtain custody of an illegitimate daughter, and the following year married Anneke van der Brugghen from Antwerp, who was sixteen years older than he was. In 1620 he bought a large house in the

Jordaan The Jordaan is a neighbourhood of the city of Amsterdam, Netherlands. It is part of the borough of Amsterdam-Centrum. The area is bordered by the Singelgracht canal and the neighbourhood of Frederik Hendrikbuurt to the west; the Prinsengracht ...

on the Lindengracht for about 4,000 guilders, but by the late 1620s he was in debt, and in 1631 had to sell it. From his studio at the top of the house, which was pulled down in 1912, he had a view on the recently finished

Noorderkerk The Noorderkerk ("northern church") is a 17th-century Protestant church in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. A number of other towns in the Netherlands also have a Noorderkerk church, including The Hague, Hoorn and Kampen. History The church was built i ...

which is on one of his etchings. In the same year he moved to

Utrecht Utrecht ( , , ) is the fourth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, in the very centre of mainland Net ...

and started to sell art. In 1633 he moved to the Hague. He appears to have died by 1638, when a Cornelia de Witte is mentioned as widow of a "Hercules Pieterz.". Like much of the detailed documentation of Segher's life, this link depends on the assumed rarity of his first name. Some later sources said that Segers took to drink towards the end of his life and died after falling down the stairs. His posthumous reputation was boosted by the ''Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst'' (''Introduction to the High School of Painting'') of Samuel van Hoogstraten which presented him rather as a Romantic genius ''avant la lettre'', lonely, poor and misunderstood, based mostly on his etchings.

Prints

He is mainly known for his highly innovative

etching Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types ...

s, mostly of landscapes, which were often printed on coloured paper or cloth, and with coloured ink, and hand-coloured and often hand-cropped to different sizes. He also made use of

drypoint Drypoint is a printmaking technique of the intaglio family, in which an image is incised into a plate (or "matrix") with a hard-pointed "needle" of sharp metal or diamond point. In principle, the method is practically identical to engraving. The ...

and a form of

aquatint Aquatint is an intaglio (printmaking), intaglio printmaking technique, a variant of etching that produces areas of tone rather than lines. For this reason it has mostly been used in conjunction with etching, to give both lines and shaded tone. ...

as well as other effects, such as running coarse cloth through the press with the print, for a mottled effect. Altogether only 183 known impressions survive from all his fifty-four plates and most are now in museums; the

Rijksmuseum The Rijksmuseum () is the national museum of the Netherlands dedicated to Dutch arts and history and is located in Amsterdam. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough of Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum, the ...

print room A print room is a room in an art gallery or museum where a collection of old master and modern prints, usually together with drawings, watercolours, and photographs, are held and viewed. A further meaning is a room decorated by pasting prints ...

has easily the best collection.

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally cons ...

collected both paintings (he had eight) and prints by Seghers, and acquired one of his original plates, ''Tobias and the Angel'' (HB 1), which he reworked into his own ''Flight into Egypt'' (B 56), keeping much of the landscape. Rembrandt also reworked the Seghers painting ''Mountain Landscape'', now in the

Uffizi The Uffizi Gallery (; it, Galleria degli Uffizi, italic=no, ) is a prominent art museum located adjacent to the Piazza della Signoria in the Historic Centre of Florence in the region of Tuscany, Italy. One of the most important Italian museums ...

, and his landscape style shows some influence from Seghers. Although the dating of his prints remains unclear, his ''Town with four towers'' (HB 29) is believed both to be one of the later prints and, by comparison with paintings, to date from around 1631. Given the small number of surviving impressions, it is unlikely that prints were a major source of income for him. His ''Pile of books'' (see Rijksmuseum link) is an unusual still-life subject for a 17th-century print. He seems to have invented the "sugar-bite"

technique, which was rediscovered in England over a century later by

Alexander Cozens Alexander Cozens (1717–1786) was a British landscape painter in watercolours, born in Russia, in Saint Petersburg. He taught drawing and wrote treatises on the subject, evolving a method in which imaginative drawings of landscapes could be wor ...

(it is also called ''lift-ground etching'').

Paintings

Hercules Seghers was probably best known to his contemporaries for his paintings of landscapes and still-life subjects such as ''

The River Valley ''The River Valley'' is a c. 1626-1630 painting by the Dutch artist Hercules Seghers Hercules Pieterszoon Seghers or Segers ( 1589 – 1638) was a Dutch painter and printmaker of the Dutch Golden Age. Segers is in fact the more common form in ...

''; his paintings are also rare, with perhaps only fifteen surviving (one was destroyed in a fire in October 2007). The

Stadholder In the Low Countries, ''stadtholder'' ( nl, stadhouder ) was an office of steward, designated a medieval official and then a national leader. The ''stadtholder'' was the replacement of the duke or count of a province during the Burgundian and ...

Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange Frederick Henry ( nl, Frederik Hendrik; 29 January 1584 – 14 March 1647) was the sovereign prince of Orange and stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, Overijssel in the Dutch Republic from 1625 until his death in 1647. In the last ...

bought landscapes in 1632. Many of his painted landscapes are fantastic mountainous compositions, whereas in his prints it is often the technical approach rather than the subject which is extreme. Seghers painted landscapes tend to show a wide horizontal view, with emphasis on earth rather than sky; two in the

Gemäldegalerie, Berlin The Gemäldegalerie (, ''Painting Gallery'') is an art museum in Berlin, Germany, and the museum where the main selection of paintings belonging to the Berlin State Museums (''Staatliche Museen zu Berlin'') is displayed. It was first opened in ...

had strips of sky added at the top later in the century to meet a changed taste. Apart from Coninxloo, Seghers drew from the Flemish landscape tradition, perhaps especially Joos de Momper and

Roelandt Savery Roelant Savery (or ''Roeland(t) Maertensz Saverij'', or ''de Savery'', or many variants; 1576 – buried 25 February 1639) was a Flanders-born Dutch Golden Age painter. Life Savery was born in Kortrijk. Like so many other artists, he belonged ...

, but also the "fantastic and visionary aspects of Mannerist" landscape painting.Slive, 184–185 The 1680 inventory of the collection of the marine painter

Jan van de Cappelle Jan van de Cappelle (or Joannes / van der / Capelle in various combinations; 25 January 1626 (baptized) – 22 December 1679 (buried)) was a Dutch Golden Age painter of seascapes and winter landscapes, also notable as an industrialist and ...

, who owned five paintings by Seghers, describes one as a view of

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

, which if correct would presumably mean Seghers traveled there, probably when young, when his style shows most Flemish influence (in so far as the chronology of his work is clear).

Gallery

File:'Woodland Path' by Hercules Segers.jpg, Seghers, ''Woodland Path'', c. 1618-20; canvas on panel File:Rp-p-ob-810.dr1.jpeg, Seghers, ''Landscape with overhanging fir'', c. 1615-30; etching on paper, hand-coloured File:Rp-p-1883-a-6993.dr1.jpeg, Seghers, ''Landscape with overhanging fir'', c. 1615-30; etching and colour on linen File:Seghers viewbrus.jpg, Seghers, ''View of

from the North-East'', c. 1625; oil on panel File:Sk-a-3120.z.jpeg, Seghers, ''River Valley'', c. 1626-30; oil on panel File:Hercules Seghers - Two Trees - WGA21142.jpg, Seghers, ''The two Trees'', c. 1620-30; etching in brown ink File:View of the Noorderkerk by Hercules Seghers.jpg, Seghers, ''View of the

'' (church in Amsterdam), c. 1622-30; etching on linen File:Hercules Seghers - Landscape with City on a River - WGA21137.jpg, Seghers, ''Landscape with City on a River'', c. 1627-29; oil-painting on oak panel File:La grande église en ruines (Hercules Seghers).jpg, Seghers, ''Ruins of a large church', c. 1629-38; print File:B056 Rembrandt.jpg, Seghers & (thereafter)

, ''Rest on the Flight into Egypt'', c. 1653; etching, drypoint and burin

Notes

References

* George S. Keyes in: K.L. Spangenberg (ed), ''Six Centuries of Master Prints'', Cincinnati Art Museum, 1993, no.s 75 & 76, * Slive, Seymour, ''Dutch Painting, 1600–1800'', Yale UP, 1995,

External links

images of many prints of Seghers in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Hercules Seghers. Picturesand Biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Seghers, Hercules 1580s births 1630s deaths Dutch Golden Age painters Dutch male painters Dutch landscape painters Dutch Golden Age printmakers Artists from Haarlem Painters from Haarlem