Hercules Segers
? Amsterdam, c. 1625 - c. 1630
lift-ground etching, printed in green (azurite and precipitated yellow lake) on paper prepared with a light pink, lead-based ground, coloured from top downwards with semi-transparent, light blue paint, coloured from the bottom upwards with a semi-transparent, grayish-blue paint
height c. 168 mm × width c. 98 mm (trimmed within the printed surface, except on left)
stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of the City of Amsterdam (L. 11)
One state (unique impression).
Missing corner at upper right made up with paper coloured grey1; horizontal tear at lower left; the ground has cracked here and in other places; laid down on an eighteenth-century (?) album sheet; darker spotting due to the oil-based binding medium in the blue colouring having permeated the paper, especially at top, visible despite mounting.
...; collection Michiel Hinloopen (1619-1708), Amsterdam;2 by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam (L. 11), 1708; from which on loan to the museum (L. 2228a), since 1885
Object number: RP-P-H-OB-847
Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam
Copyright: Public domain
Trees and Woods
Segers’s teacher, the Protestant landscapist Gillis van Coninxloo (1544-1606/07), fled besieged Antwerp in 1585 and stopped in Middelburg before finding his way to Frankenthal, where he played a seminal role in the development of a new artistic genre: the independent monumental forest scene.3 The trees and groves that initially served mainly as repoussoirs for sweeping panoramas became Van Coninxloo’s principal subject. His pictures met with great success, and he even received commissions from Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II (1552-1612). He settled in Amsterdam in 1595 and earnt a reputation as an innovative landscape painter. In his Schilder-boeck (1604), Karel van Mander (1548-1606) praised Van Coninxloo as the best 'landscapist' ('landtschap-maker') of his time. His work was widely followed in Holland, and, with a wink to his speciality, Van Mander noted facetiously that the trees that had fairly withered in Dutch painting were now growing to great heights following his model.4 After the death of his teacher at the end of 1606 or the beginning of 1607, Segers did not develop into an explicit specialist in forest landscapes, although he did practice the genre, albeit on a modest scale and format.
Closely related to works by Van Coninxloo, in terms of both the compositions and the depictions of trees, are three prints of trees and woods by Segers (HB 35-37), as well as the small forest scene on canvas in a private collection in Norway attributed to Segers in 2016 (P 1).5 Although they differ in format and execution, the layout of the three etchings agrees: our eye is led from the foreground along a road to a house or farmstead. Two impressions of the smallest etching were printed on cloth prepared with a pale grey and a pale brown priming (HB 35a, inv. no. RP-P-H-OB-852; and HB 35b, British Museum, London, inv. no S.5224). Segers used exactly the same combination for two impressions of the small Landscape with an Oak Tree and a Distant View (HB 28a, inv. no. RP-P-H-OB-850; and HB 28b, inv. no. RP-P-H-OB-851).
An oil sketch with a road and a house encircled by trees (inv. no. RP-T-H-00-251) is also difficult to read. It may have been part of the working material from Segers’s workshop that – like his only other extant oil sketch (inv. no. RP-T-H-00-250) – entered the collection of Michiel Hinloopen (1619-1708). The composition of the oil sketch largely corresponds with an etching (HB 36, Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden, inv. no. A 49377), of which only a single impression is preserved. It shows the road, the fence and the house surrounded by trees more or less in reverse, but without the figure that looms up like a phantom on the left in the sketch. In a second phase – and probably later – Segers introduced areas of shadow in drypoint in the road and the fencing on the right in the etching. The unique impression in blue ink on pink-prepared paper belongs to a group of prints Segers pulled in the same color combination, and probably at the same time. A transparent layer of green paint was applied in rapid brushstrokes over the entire landscape. This may be the beginning of an alteration in which the sky would ultimately be colored as well. The print shares its partly finished state with impressions of other etchings on a pink ground.6
Very comparable to the oil sketch and the print mentioned above is the etching Road near a Farm House Surrounded by Trees and a Fence, of which a unique impression is preserved in the British Museum, London (HB 37, inv. no. S.5532). It is printed in black on paper prepared with a thin greyish-yellow ground. In combination with the ground, the fine lines and burr of the drypoint have turned brown. These passages of shadow are not drawn with a pen or brush, as has often been assumed.7 With their round leaves and stereotypical tree trunks, Segers’s previously discussed forest scenes look simple compared to the richly forested landscape prints by his contemporaries, such as Willem Buytewech (1591/92-1624) or Esaias van de Velde (1587-1630). And yet Segers’s sizeable etching, with its expressive and differentiated rendering of tree trunks, branches and leaves, is virtually unparalleled in seventeenth-century printmaking.8
Huigen Leeflang, 2016
Hercules Segers (Haarlem c. 1589/90 - ? 1633/40)
No baptismal record has been found, but he was probably born in Haarlem in c. 1589/90.9 The artist mentioned his age twice: once in 1614 stating he was a twenty-four-year-old man from Haarlem and once in 1623 were he mentions he is about thirty-four years old.10 His parents, Pieter Segers (c. 1564-1611/12) and Cathelijne Hercules (d. after 1618), both came from Ghent. Hercules was most likely their second son, since he was named after the patronymic of his mother. Whether he had more siblings than his younger brother, Laurens (c. 1592/93-after 1616), is not known.11
Hercules’ father was a merchant in Haarlem and Amsterdam, but chose for his son another profession.12 The denomination of the family is unknown, but mostly likely they were not Mennonites, as often claimed in the literature. Hercules became an apprentice of the painter Gillis van Coninxloo (1544-1606/07), a landscape artist from Antwerp, who had a workshop at his house on the Oude Turfmarkt.13 Following Van Coninxloo’s death, Segers undoubtedly finished his training in another workshop. However, no documents have survived to confirm this.14
In 1612 Segers left Amsterdam and settled in Haarlem. His name appears in the registration of the Guild of St. Luke of 1612.15 In the summer of 1614 Segers was again documented as living in Amsterdam, together with his extramarital daughter, Nelletje Hercules (?-?). At the age of twenty-four, he married the forty-year-old Anna van der Bruggen (c. 1574-?).16 Apparently, he was doing well financially, able in 1619 to purchase a large new house on the Lindengracht in Amsterdam called De Hertog van Gelre.17 In his etching View through the Window of Segers’s House toward the Noorderkerk (HB 41, inv. no RP-P-H-OB-857), he captured the view from a window in the attic of that house. A decade later, his fortunes changed and he had to sell his house and dismantle his workshop. He moved to Utrecht in 1631.18 Segers seems to have been active as an art dealer. In May 1631 he sold around 137 paintings to the Amsterdam dealer Jean Antonio Romiti (?-?), including a painting by the young Rembrandt (1606-1669).19 In 1632 he was living in The Hague and was involved in the sale of about 180 paintings. The only other evidence of his stay there are two documents of 1633, one concerning the art deal and the other regarding the rental of a house.20 His name does not appear again in the archives, not even in burial records. He probably died between 1633 and 1640.21
Segers addressed himself multiple times as painter, such as on 28 January 1633 when he was mentioned as ‘painter, at present living in The Hague’ (‘schilder, jegenwoordigh wonende alhier in Den Hage’).22 However, it is his highly original printed oeuvre to which the artist owes his present day fame. Although he specialized in mountain landscapes, it is doubtful if he ever saw a mountain in real life. His depictions of ancient Italian ruins all derive from prints by other artists, and it is unlikely he travelled to Italy himself.
One painting by Segers suggests that he travelled to the Southern Netherlands. His topographical View of Brussels from the Northeast in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne (P 16, inv. no. WRM Dep. 249) is in all probability a reflection of a visit to that city.23 His landscapes and city views depicting places in the provinces of Holland, Utrecht and Gelderland are also most likely based on personal observations and drawings ‘from life’.
Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678) was the only contemporary to write about Segers. In his Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkunst (Introduction to the Academy of Painting) of 1678, he described an artist who had great talent but did not receive much recognition during his life. Shortly after his death, however, his prints were most sought after by art lovers who were willing to pay enormous prices for impressions of his prints.24 However this may be, there are indications that Segers’s work was appreciated during his lifetime and well into the seventeenth century by a small group of art lovers and artists.25
The paintings that can be attributed to Segers with certainty are a Woodland Path in a private collection in Norway, four mountain landscapes (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Mauritshuis, The Hague; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence), five Dutch panoramic landscapes (two in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin; National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh; LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Münster, on loan from a private collection; private collection in the Netherlands), four hybrid landscapes (private collection in Brussels; Galerie Hans, Hamburg; Museo Thyssen Bornemisza, Madrid; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam) and a View of Brussels (Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne). His etchings are extremely rare. In total fifty-three different etchings have survived in 182 impressions – twenty-two of which are unique. Twenty-four of the known etchings depict mountain landscapes, two Biblical scenes, eight panoramic landscapes, six forest-landscapes and trees, eleven ruins and other buildings, four seascapes and ships, and three extraordinary prints show a rearing horse, a skull and a still life with books.
The chronology of Segers’s oeuvre is hard to determine because none of his works is dated. His development as an artist between 1615 and 1630 has traditionally been described as that of a specialist in mountain landscapes based on the tradition set by Pieter Bruegel (1526/30-1569) and his successors towards a pioneer in Dutch panoramic landscapes. Dendrochronological research on the panels he used, however, suggests that Segers made different types of work throughout his career. He created a new kind of panoramic views with a lowered horizon and impressive skies that anticipated the works of the younger generation of specialists in Dutch landscapes, such as Pieter de Molijn (1595-1661) and Jan van Goyen (1596-1656). Simultaneously he created, both in painting and etching, fantastic mountain views and mountain landscapes.
Segers’s graphic experiments with tone and colour are closely related to his work as a painter. The materials he used for his prints, such as pigments, priming and linen, are what one expects to find in a seventeenth-century painter’s workshop rather than in that of a printmaker. Segers’s etchings bear witness to an exceptionally inventive use of printmaking techniques. No printmaker before him had experimented on such a grand scale with the possibilities of copper-plates, etching grounds, etching needles and other graphic tools or with printing and touching-up in colour.
Jaap van der Veen, 2016/Huigen Leeflang, 2020
References
A. Bredius, ‘Iets over Hercules Segers’, in F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis. Verzameling van meerendeels onuitgegeven berichten en mededeelingen betreffende Nederlandsche schilders, plaatsnijders, beeldhouwers, bouwmeesters, juweliers, goud- en zilverdrijvers…, 7 vols., Rotterdam, 1877-90, IV (1882), pp. 314-15; I.H. van Eeghen, ’De ouders van Hercules Segers’, Maandblad Amstelodamum 55 (1968), no. 4, pp. 73-76; J.Z. Kannegieter, ‘Het huis van Hercules Segers op de Lindengracht te Amsterdam’, Oud Holland 59 (1942), nos. 5/6, pp. 150-57; H. Miedema, De archiefbescheiden van het St. Lukasgilde te Haarlem, 2 vols., Alphen aan den Rijn 1980, II, p. 1035; J. van der Veen, ‘”Hercules Segers, disregarded and yet a great artist”: A Sketch of his Life’, in H. Leeflang and P. Roeloefs (eds.), Hercules Segers: Painter, Etcher, 2 vols., exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art) 2016-17, I, pp. 17-36; H. Leeflang, ‘”For he also printed paintings”: Hercules Segers’s Painterly Prints’, in ibid., pp. 39-73; P. Roeloefs, ‘Hercules Segers, the Painter’, in ibid, pp. 111-38
Moss-covered branches and trees are a recurring motif in Segers’s etchings. The most striking example is the present work, which speaks to the imagination and is indeed one of his most iconic prints.26 It is done in lift-ground technique and printed in green ink on pale pink-prepared paper. The ink seems slightly browned. At the top and bottom, the paper was colored with transparent blue paint, which is increasingly more thinly applied towards the middle. Together with the pink ground, this creates an iridescent effect.
The question of whether Segers depicted existing flora or whether the 'tree' is a figment of his imagination has been subject to a fair amount of speculation.27 It has been identified as a spruce and a larch tree. Pine trees with drooping, mossy branches feature frequently in etchings and paintings by Albrecht Altdorfer (c. 1480-1538) and other artists of the so-called Danube School (e.g. the colored etching in the Albertina, Vienna, inv. no. DG1923/1779).28 Segers may well have been inspired by the strange vegetation in such early sixteenth-century German prints. However, drooping, moss-covered branches also occur in paintings by Adam Elsheimer (1578-1610) and his followers, including Segers’s fellow artist and townsman Jacob Pynas (1592-1650).29
It has been suggested that trees in Chinese scroll paintings served as models for Segers, but this notion is based on vague associations with Asian art rather than any concrete example and seems to be literally far-fetched. Segers did not have to draw on art by others per se for his fanciful trees and branches. Beard lichen, or old man’s beard (Unsea), which grows in damp woodlands on dead or dying trees in the Netherlands and elsewhere, sometimes assume shapes that look as though they came straight out of Segers’s etchings.30 Segers’s treatment of such a natural phenomenon as an independent subject and his astonishing technique makes The Mossy Tree unique among seventeenth-century works of art. In fact, what is depicted is not a tree or a trunk, but rather a series of calligraphically built-up mossy branches connected only with thin lines, which seem to float before the softly colored background.
Huigen Leeflang, 2016
J. Springer, Die Radierungen des Herkules Seghers, 3 vols., Berlin 1910-12, no. 37 (Die bemooste Tanne), pl. LXV; J.P. van der Kellen, Afbeeldingen naar belangrijke prenten en teekeningen in het Rijksprentenkabinet Amsterdam/Reproductions d’après des estampes et des dessins importants du Cabinet des estampes à Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1908, pl. XXXIII; W. Fraenger, Die Radierungen des Hercules Seghers: Ein physiognomischer Versuch, Erlenbach-Zurich and elsewhere 1922, pp. 69, 80, 88; R. Grosse, Die holländische Landschaftskunst, 1600-1650, 2nd edn., Stuttgart 1925, pp. 45, 104, 122; J. Poortenaar, Hollandsche etsers van de gouden eeuw, Amsterdam 1938 (fig. 76); G. Knuttel Wzn., Hercules Seghers, Amsterdam [1941], pp. 46-48; L.C. Collins, Hercules Seghers, Chicago 1953, pp. 99-100 (fig. 130); E. Trautscholdt, 'Neues Bemühen um Hercules Seghers', Imprimatur 12 (1954-55), p. 84; K.G. Boon, 'Hercules Seghers (1589/90-1638). De Poort, De Larix', Openbaar Kunstbezit 1 (1957), no. 30a; E. Haverkamp-Begemann, Hercules Segers: The Complete Etchings, with a Supplement on Johannes Ruischer by E. Trautscholdt, Amsterdam and The Hague 1973, no. 32 and pp. 34-36, 44, 55; J. Rowlands, Hercules Segers, Amsterdam 1979, no. 32; I.M. de Groot, Landschappen. Etsen van de Nederlandse meesters uit de zeventiende eeuw, Amsterdam 1979, no. 44; F.W.H. Hollstein, Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, ca. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1949-2010, XXVI (1981; Hercules Segers), no. 32; J. van der Waals, De prentschat van Michiel Hinloopen. Een reconstructie van de eerste openbare papierkunstverzameling in Nederland, The Hague and Amsterdam 1988, pp. 148-49 (fig. 196); H. Leeflang and P. Roelofs (eds.), Hercules Segers: Painter, Etcher, 2 vols., exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art) 2016-17, I, no. HB 32
H. Leeflang, 2016, 'Hercules Segers, The Mossy Tree [HB 32], Amsterdam, c. 1625 - c. 1630', in J. Turner (ed.), Works by Hercules Segers in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.37287
(accessed 10 November 2024 11:03:40).