September 16 2016 - 2:30 PM
Until very recently only twelve paintings by the seventeenth-century artist Hercules Segers were known. Extensive research by a team of specialists from the Rijksmuseum has now added six more to his oeuvre.
New Segers Paintings Discovered
Rijksmuseum Research Team Discovers New Paintings during Preparations for Exhibition
Four of the works were previously practically unknown. The most recent attribution of a painting to Segers took place last week. It brings the total number of paintings that can be securely attributed to Segers to eighteen. All the ‘new’ paintings, which are in private collections, will be on show along with a hundred and ten prints by the artist in 'Hercules Segers', which runs from 7 October 2016 to 8 January 2017. This exhibition in the Rijksmuseum will present the most complete retrospective of the artist ever seen.
Taco Dibbits, General Director Rijksmuseum: Very seldom can one add so many new paintings to such a small oeuvre. It is truly fantastic that we can show so much unknown work by this most innovative artist of the Golden Age in the exhibition!
Discoveries and Attributions
Since the middle of the last century, most art historians have agreed about the attribution of ten to twelve paintings to Hercules Segers. Thanks to exhaustive art-historical investigations and research into materials and techniques by a team of Rijksmuseum specialists, sixteen paintings and two oil sketches can now be presented as autograph works. The three paintings, Woodland Path, Panoramic Landscape with a Town on a River and Panoramic Landscape with Two Towers, all owned privately, have never been seen before. The Mountain Landscape from Hovingham Hall in England was last shown almost fifty years ago. Alongside the four works by Segers, there are two other paintings from private collections that have long been considered doubtful but may now also be definitively added to Segers’ oeuvre. They are the River Landscape with Figures and River Landscape with a Mill. Two new prints by the artist have also been found.
Hercules Segers Exhibition from 7 October 2016
From 7 October 2016 to 8 January 2017 the Rijksmuseum presents the first ever complete retrospective of Hercules Segers, one of the most mysterious and experimental artists of the Golden Age. His curious mountain landscapes and endless panoramas attest to a boundless imagination. As a printmaker, Segers was a true pioneer, who developed wholly individual techniques for his colourful etchings. Through the centuries Hercules Segers has fascinated and inspired many artists and poets. Rembrandt owned a least eight of his paintings. Eighteen paintings and a hundred and ten impressions of fifty-four prints will be on display in the Rijksmuseum from 7 October to 8 January 2017. The exhibition travels on to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The Hercules Segers exhibition in the Rijksmuseum is made possible in part by the support of the Marle Fonds/Rijksmuseum Fonds, Ammodo, the Turing Foundation, Douwe Egberts, FedEx, FrieslandCampina and Heineken.