Hercules Seghers
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hercules Pieterszoon Seghers or
Segers (c. 1589 – c. 1638) was a Dutch
painter and
printmaker of the
Dutch Golden Age.
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).
[1] He was "
the most inspired, experimental and original landscapist" of his period and an even more innovative printmaker.
[2]
Life
Hercules was born in
Haarlem, as the son of a
Mennonite cloth merchant, originally from Flanders, who moved to
Amsterdam in 1596. There Hercules was apprenticed to the leading Dutch 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 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
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 which is on one of his etchings.
[4] In the same year he moved to
Utrecht
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.
[5]
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
Landscape with Fir Etching on painted paper, Rijksmuseum
He is mainly known for his highly innovative
etchings,
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 and a form of
aquatint 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 print room has easily the best collection.
Rembrandt collected both paintings (he had eight) and prints by Seghers, and acquired one of his original plates,
Tobias and the Angel (HB 1),
[6] 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, 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"
aquatint technique, which was rediscovered in England over a century later by
Alexander Cozens (it is also called
lift-ground etching).
Paintings
He was probably best known to his contemporaries for his paintings of
landscapes and still-life subjects; his paintings are also rare, with
perhaps only fifteen surviving (one was destroyed in a fire in October
2007
[8]). The
Stadholder,
Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange
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. His painted
landscapes tend to show a wide horizontal view, with emphasis on earth
rather than sky; two in the
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
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.
[9] 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,
which if correct would presumably mean Seghers travelled there,
probably when young, when his style shows most Flemish influence (in so
far as the chronology of his work is clear).
[1]
Sources
- George S. Keyes in: K.L. Spangenberg (ed), Six Centuries of Master Prints, Cincinnati Art Museum, 1993, no.s 75 & 76, ISBN 0-931537-15-0
- ^ a b c Neil MacLaren, The Dutch School, 1600-1800, Volume I, National Gallery Catalogues,p. 418-20, 1991, National Gallery, London, ISBN 0-947645-99-3
- ^ Seymour Slive, Dutch Painting, 1600-1800, p. 183, Yale UP, 1995, ISBN 0-300-07451-4
- ^ The attribution is contested by many. See other references for the fire in Amersfoort.
- ^ Kannegieter, Z.J. (1942) Het huis van Hercules Segers op de Lindengracht te Amsterdam.
In: Historische studiën en schetsen, p. 24-25. The actual price of the
house is not recorded, and is an estimate by Kannegieter, based on
similar sales.
- ^ Hoogsteder & Hoogsteder, Mathieu Dubus, avant-gardist
- ^ In fact a free copy by Seghers of the Goudt print of Adam Elsheimer's "Large Tobias" painting, now lost. See Slive, op cit p.184
- ^ R van Luttervelt, Dutch Museums, p.202, 1960, Thames & Hudson, London.
- ^ Armando Museum in Ruins After Fire
- ^ Slive op cit, pp.184-5
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