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

painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

and

printmaker Printmaking is the process of creating 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 processed technique ...

of the

Dutch Golden Age The Dutch Golden Age ( ) was a period in the history of the Netherlands which roughly lasted from 1588, when the Dutch Republic was established, to 1672, when the '' Rampjaar'' occurred. During this period, Dutch trade, scientific development ...

. 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 language, English) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the Provinces of the Nether ...

, the son of Cathalina Hercules and Pieter Seghers, a

Mennonite Mennonites are a group of Anabaptism, Anabaptist Christianity, Christian communities tracing their roots to the epoch of the Radical Reformation. The name ''Mennonites'' is derived from the cleric Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland, part of ...

cloth merchant, originally from Flanders, who moved to

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

in 1596. There Hercules was apprenticed to the leading Flemish landscapist of the day, Gillis van Coninxloo, 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 Pieter Lastman (1583–1633) was a Dutch painter. Lastman is considered important because of his work as a painter of history pieces and because his pupils included Rembrandt and Jan Lievens. In his paintings Lastman paid careful attention to ...

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 Anneken 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 Boroughs of Amsterdam, borough of Amsterdam-Centrum. The area is bordered by the Singelgracht canal and the neighbourhood of Frederik Hendrikbuurt to the ...

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 (Dutch language, Dutch for "northern church") is a 17th-century Protestant church in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The Noorderkerk is located along Prinsengracht canal, on Noordermarkt square. The church is used for Dutch Reformed Ch ...

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

Utrecht Utrecht ( ; ; ) is the List of cities in the Netherlands by province, fourth-largest city of the Netherlands, as well as the capital and the most populous city of the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of Utrecht (province), Utrecht. The ...

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 Seghers 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 Samuel Dirksz van Hoogstraten (2 August 1627, in Dordrecht – 19 October 1678, in Dordrecht) was a Dutch Golden Age painter, who was also a poet and author on art theory. Biography Samuel Dirksz van Hoogstraten trained first with his father Di ...

, which presented him rather as a Romantic genius ''avant la lettre'', lonely, poor and misunderstood, based mostly on his etchings. Hoogstraeten's description of Segher's life is included in the chapter "How the Artist Should Behave in the Face of Adverse Fortune", wherein he depicts Seghers as an idiosyncratic talent, hounded by misfortune and economic instability.

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 type ...

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 (printmaking), 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 iden ...

and a form of

aquatint Aquatint is an 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. It has also been used ...

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 S ...

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

has easily the best collection.

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (; ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), mononymously known as Rembrandt was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and Drawing, draughtsman. He is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in ...

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 ( ; , ) is a prominent art museum 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 the most visited, it is also one of th ...

, 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 (1717–23 April 1786) was a British landscape painter in watercolours, born in Saint Petersburg, Russia. He taught drawing and wrote treatises on the subject, evolving a method in which imaginative drawings of landscapes could ...

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

Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange Frederick Henry (; 29 January 1584 – 14 March 1647) was the sovereign prince of Orange and stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, and Overijssel in the Dutch Republic from his older half-brother's death on 23 April 1625 until his ...

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 (, 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 1830, and the cur ...

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

Brussels Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...

, 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 File:Paisagem rochosa, Casa Museu Eva Klabin.jpg, Seghers, ''The Landscape with the white rock'', c. 1590-1640; oil-painting on canvas; Casa Museu Eva Klabin collection

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 Painters from Haarlem