River Valley [P 7]

? Amsterdam, c. 1626 - c. 1630

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 30 cm × width 53.5 cm

Inscriptions

signed: lower centre, hercules segers

Technical notes

The oak support consists of one plank with a horizontal grain. The reverse of the panel has been thinned and cradled. This was done in the period 1900-1920, according to the conservator L. Kuiper. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1609. The panel could have been ready for use by 1620, but a date in or after 1626 is more likely. Cross-sections of paint samples show that the panel was prepared with a thin bottom layer containing lead white, followed by a thicker brownish layer with lead-white lumps and brown and ochre iron oxides. The relatively cheap pigments, smalt and verdigris, were identified in a paint sample of the area where the sky touches the mountains in the right background. Smalt was found in other samples as well. Cross-sections show a remarkably simple structure that generally consists of no more than three paint layers. Examination of the green tree in the middleground indicates that the first paint layers were applied while the ground was still a little wet. Mass spectrometry of the paint samples carried out by Arie Wallert indicated that Segers used a common drying oil as the binding medium (the P to S ratio indicates linseed oil). Infrared reflectography showed an underdrawing in a dry medium, which seems to be pounced in the centre and in the left part of the composition. The paint surface has a rich texture accomplished by glazing and scumbling over furrows of the strong impasto in the underpaint.

Scientific examination and reports

dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 3 February 1993
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 27 October 1995
infrared reflectography: A. Wallert, RMA, 1997
paint samples: A. Wallert, RMA/ICN, 1997
technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 1 May 2002

Literature scientific examination and reports

Pijl 1995; Wallert 1998

Condition

Fair. The panel has one horizontal crack over its entire width and three horizontal cracks of approximately 5 cm each on the right side. There are some areas of discoloured retouching, and the varnish is matte there.

Conservation

L. Kuiper, 1981: complete restoration; overpaint in the sky, mountains, rock plateaus, the figure in the left foreground and the tree-stump behind him removed

Provenance

...; Hugo, Count of Enzenberg zum Freyen un Jöchelsthurn (1838-1922), Innsbruck, 1902, as Joos de Momper; from whom purchased by Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague, 1902-03; by whom given in usufruct to the Municipality of Groningen, 1914; bequeathed to the museum on the condition that a painting of comparable value be donated to the Municipality of Groningen, 1931 (the donated painting was Willem van de Velde II, Ship on a Stormy Sea, inv. no. SK-A-441).

Object number: SK-A-3120

The artist

Hercules Segers (Haarlem c. 1589/90 - ? 1633/40)

No baptismal record has been found, but he was probably born in Haarlem in c. 1589/90.¹ 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.² 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.³

Hercules’ father was a merchant in Haarlem and Amsterdam, but chose for his son another profession.⁴ 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.⁵ Following Van Coninxloo’s death, Segers undoubtedly finished his training in another workshop. However, no documents have survived to confirm this.⁶

In 1612 Segers left Amsterdam and settled in Haarlem. His name appears in the registration of the Guild of St. Luke of 1612.⁷ 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-?).⁸ 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.⁹ 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 1631.¹⁰ 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).¹¹ 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.¹² His name does not appear again in the archives, not even in burial records. He probably died between 1633 and 1640.¹³

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’).¹⁴ 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.¹⁵ 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.¹⁶ 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.¹⁷

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

Entry

For many years, River Valley was considered one of Hercules Segers’s earliest works. The distinctly Flemish elements, such as the high viewpoint, rugged mountains, atmospheric perspective, structure of horizontal bands, and thin application of paint with impasto accents, led many to conclude that the mountain landscape dated from the second decade of the seventeenth century.¹⁸ Collins even placed the painting between 1607 and 1611, at the beginning of Segers’s career, directly after his training with Gillis van Coninxloo (1544-1606/07).¹⁹ However, the signature hercules.segers rules out such an early dating. As Pijl noted, the painter first used this name from 1621.²⁰ Moreover, dendrochronological research undertaken by Peter Klein has demonstrated that the panel would have been ready for use only from circa 1626 at the earliest.²¹ As such, the panel belongs, together with the three other mountain landscapes (P 8-10), among the paintings made in his later years in Amsterdam between circa 1625 and 1630, parallel to his panoramic landscapes (P 11-15). Segers was apparently able to shift effortlessly between these different landscape types during these years.

Hofstede de Groot was convinced that Segers based this painting on observations made during a journey to the South and that it depicted the Swiss Rhine valley with the Fläschenberg at the centre.²² Collins, by contrast, saw a correspondence with the landscape of the Apennines in Central Italy.²³ There is, however, no tangible evidence in Segers’s works that he ever travelled further south than Brabant. Whereas the topography plays an important role in his panoramic landscapes (P 11-13, in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (inv. nos. 808A and 806B, and the National Gallery of Scotland (inv. no. NG 2800), in his River Valley he made no conscious allusion to a specific location. As in the majority of his paintings and prints, the scene sprung from his imagination. Stechow referred to River Valley as 'the most Flamisant' of Segers’s known works.

Indeed, one can perceive clear parallels with works by followers of Pieter Bruegel I (1525-1569), whose works were abundantly available in Amsterdam’s art market in the early seventeenth century. The bright colour palette calls to mind the mountain landscapes of Van Coninxloo, and in its structure - with the river valley surrounded by rocks - there is an echo of the work of Kerstiaen de Keuninck (1560-1632). There is also a remarkable similarity with the river valley, mountains and conifers in a late sixteenth-century print after Hans Bol (1534-1593) of the Temptation of Christ (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1899-A-21657).²⁴ But the light green, blue, dark brown and ochre tints, strong white highlights and pinkish-red accents, as well as the sketchy, fluid execution, show the influence, above all, of Joos de Momper, to whom the painting was attributed until the beginning of the twentieth century.²⁵ Hofstede de Groot ascribed the landscape to Segers immediately after purchasing the panel in Switzerland in 1902-03.²⁶ That he was correct in his attribution was confirmed shortly thereafter when the signature was revealed beneath the frame. Von Bode, the general director of the Gemäldegalerie, determined that the signature was the same as that on View of Rhenen from the North-east in Berlin (P 11) and was the first to publish the panel in an essay on Segers in 1903, thus establishing River Valley as the second signed painting among Segers's known oeuvre.

Segers prepared the composition with an underdrawing. Unusually for Dutch painting in the early seventeenth century, the underpainting was applied while the ground was still wet in places. This is also true of the manner in which he rendered the green tree at centre; the impasto of the first layer of paint - here and there pink in tone - plays an important part in the final image. He applied thick lead white highlights to the upper layer with broad dabs.²⁷ The extensive, rocky mountain valley, the sparse vegetation, the isolated houses and the ruined church at centre call to mind several of his prints (HB 9, HB 14, HB 16 and HB 22).²⁸ The gently bowed cypresses or conifers are also a feature of several other paintings and many of his prints.²⁹ The man with the sack on his back on the dark mountain slope at left resembles the figures in Mountain Landscape with a Distant View in the Uffizi, Florence (P 5, inv. no. 1303), and Landscape with a Windmill in the LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Münster, on loan from a private collection (P 6, inv. no. 1821LG). With the exception of the two figures on foot in his River Landscape with Figures in a private collection in Belgium (P 10), this is the largest figure in Segers’s known painted oeuvre, comparable with the man with a stick under the tree in his etching Mountain Valley, at the Right a Man Carrying a Stick (HB 9, e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-820).³⁰

Pieter Roelofs, 2016

Literature

Kunsthistorische Ausstellung, exh. cat. Innsbruck (Tiroler Landesmuseum) 1902, no. 145; W. (von) Bode, 'Der Malere Hercules Segers', Jahrbuch der Könlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen 24 (1903), pp. 192, 194 (fig. 5); W. (von) Bode, Rembrandt und seine Zeitgenossen, Leipzig 1906, p. 110; K. Freise, 'Gemälde aus der Sammlung Hofstede de Groot im Haag', Monatshefte für Kunstwissenschaft 2 (1909), pp. 25-26; A. Bredius, 'Ein neuer Hercules Seghers', Kunstchronik: Wochenschrift für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe 27 (1915-16), p. 83; W. (von) Bode, Die Meister der holländischen und vlämischen Malerschulen, Leipzig 1917, p. 150; Exposition hollandaise: Tableux, aquarelles et dessins anciens et modernes, exh. cat. Paris (Musée du Louvre) 1921, no. 98; K. Pfister, Herkules Segers, Munich 1921, fig. 1; W. (von) Bode, 'Kunsthistorische Ausbeute aus dem deutschen Kunsthandel von heute', Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 47 (1926), p. 256; C. Hofstede de Groot, 'Langs welken weg trok Hercules Seghers naar Italië?', Oud Holland 44 (1927), pp. 56 (fig. 9), 60; Ch. Holmes, 'The Landscape Work of Hercules Seghers', Burlington Magazine 52 (1928), p. 215; Verzameling C. Hofstede de Groot, III. Schilderijen, (Nederlandsche) teekeningen en kunstnijverheid, exh. cat. Groningen (Groninger Museum) 1930, no. 23; Verzameling C. Hofstede de Groot. Kunstwerken nagelaten aan musea te Groningen en Haarlem, exh. cat. The Hague (Gemeentemuseum) 1930, no. 17; Verslagen omtrent 's Rijks verzamelingen van Geschiedenis en Kunst 1930 53, The Hague 1931, p. 7; B.W.F. van Riemsdijk, Catalogus der schilderijen, pastels, miniaturen, aquarellen tentoongesteld in het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1934, p. 264 (no. 2198a); E. Trautscholdt, 'Seghers (Segers, Seegers, Zegers), Hercules (Herkules, Harcules) Pietersz.', in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Leipzig 1907-50, XXX (1936), p. 445 (no. 1); E. Trautscholdt, 'Der Maler Herkules Seghers', Pantheon 25 (1940), pp. 81, 84; G. Knuttel, Hercules Seghers, Amsterdam [1941], pp. 42, 50, 52; A. van Schendel, La Peinture hollandaise de Jérôme Bosch à Rembrandt, exh. cat. Brussel (Paleis voor Schone Kunsten) 1946, no. 101 (fig. 50); H. Gerson, De schoonheid van ons land. Schilderkunst van Geertgen tot Frans Hals. De Nederlandse schilderkunst, I, Amsterdam 1950, p. 46 (fig. 124); W. (von) Bode, Die Meister der holländischen und vlämischen Malerschulen, rev. edn., ed. E. Plietzsch, Leipzig 1951, p. 204; J.C. Ebbinge Wubben, 'Het nieuw verworven landschap van Hercules Seghers', Bulletin Museum Boymans (May 1953), p. 42 (fig. 11), p. 43; L.C. Collins, Hercules Seghers, Chicago 1953, pp. 3, 28-29, 118-19, 131, pl. XVII (fig. 25); J.G. van Gelder, 'Hercules Seghers: Addenda', Oud Holland 68 (1953), p. 150; E. Haverkamp-Begemann, Hercules Seghers, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boymans) 1954, no. 1 (fig. 1); E. Trautscholdt, 'Review of Hercules Seghers, Leo C. Collins', Kunstchronik: Monatsschrift für Kunstwissenschaft, Museumwesen und Denkmalpflege 7 (1954), no. 1, p. 3; Catalogue of Paintings: Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1960, p. 285 (no. 2198); H. Gerson, Het landschap in de Nederlanden, 1550-1630. Van Pieter Bruegel tot Rubens en Hercules Seghers, exh. cat. Breda (De Beyerd)/Ghent (Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1960-61, no. 57; W. Stechow, Dutch Landscape Painting of the 17th Century, London 1966, pp. 132-33 (fig. 265); E. Haverkamp-Begemann, Hercules Seghers, Amsterdam 1968, p. 10 (fig. 4); P.J.J. van Thiel et al., All the Paintings of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1976, p. 513 (no. A 3120); J. Rowlands, Hercules Segers, Amsterdam 1979, pp. 16, 33 (fig. 46); T. Gerszi, 'Landschaftsdarstellungen von Pieter Bruegel und Hercules Seghers', Bruckmanns Pantheon 39 (1981), pp. 133-40 (fig. 3); J.P. Filedt Kok, 'Rivierdal van Hercules Segers schoongemaakt', Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 30 (1982), pp. 169-76; J.G.C.A. Briels, Vlaamse schilders in de noordelijke Nederlanden in het begin van de gouden eeuw, Antwerp 1987, pp. 336, 338-39 (fig. 429); G. Luijten and A. van Suchtelen (eds.), Dawn of the Golden Age: Northern Netherlandish Art, 1580-1620, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1993-94, no. 343; L. Pijl, 'Over de chronologie van de schilderijen van Hercules Segers', Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 43 (1995), pp. 172-73 (fig. 1), 178; B.P.J. Broos, 'Segers [Seghers], Hercules (Pietersz.)', in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, London and New York 1996, XXVIII, pp. 358-60; A. Wallert, 'A Note on Technical Aspects of Prints and Paintings of Hercules Segers', in A. Roy and P. Smith (eds.), Painting Techniques, History, Materials and Studio Practice: Contributions to the Dublin Congress, 7-11 September 1998, London 1998, pp. 152-53; L. Pijl, Van Cuyp tot Rembrandt. De verzameling Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, exh. cat. Groningen (Groninger Museum) 2005-06, no. 107; Y. Bruijnen in J. Bikker et al., Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2007, pp. 357-58 (no. 273); R. Priem et al., Vermeer, Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art: Masterpieces from the Rijksmuseum, exh. cat. Vancouver (Art Gallery) 2009, p. 126; 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. P 7

Citation

P. Roelofs, 2016, 'Hercules Segers, River Valley [P 7], Amsterdam, c. 1626 - c. 1630', in J. Turner (ed.), Works by Hercules Segers in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5451

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