Hercules Segers, after Hans Baldung Grien
? Amsterdam, c. 1630 - c. 1633
line etching with tone and highlights created by using crosshatching and stopping-out, printed in black on paper prepared with a cream-coloured ground containing lead
height c. 163 mm × width c. 157 mm (trimmed within the printed surface, at the top almost along the plate mark)
stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (L. 240)
One state. Watermark: pot; similar to Heawood, nos. 3670 (1630), 3671-72 (1633); quite similar, but without the letters next to it.
The verso is dark yellow from the oil-based binding medium in the ground having permeated the paper.
...; collection Pieter Cornelis, Baron van Leyden (1717-1788), Leiden;1 his daughter, Françoise Johanna Gael-van Leyden (1745-1813), Leiden;2 from whom, en bloc, fl. 100,000, to Louis Napoléon Bonaparte (1778-1846), King of Holland, Amsterdam, for the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (L. 240), The Hague, 1807; transferred to the museum, 1816
Object number: RP-P-OB-797
Credit line: Transferred from the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (The Hague), 1816
Copyright: Public domain
Biblical Subjects
Only two works by Segers have been preserved in which human figures are the focus. Both are biblical scenes, freely copied after prints by other masters. Tobias and the Angel (HB 1, e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-796 is inspired by an engraving of 1613 (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-52.971) by Hendrick Goudt (c. 1583-1648),3 after a painting by Adam Elsheimer (1578-1610).4 The present Lamentation of Christ (HB 2), of which the museum has two impressions, is derived from a woodcut by Hans Baldung (c. 1484-1545) of a century earlier (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-4077).5
The two impressions of Tobias and the Angel, in Amsterdam and in the Edmond de Rothschild Collection, Musée du Louvre, Paris (HB 1b, inv. no. 2368 LR), bear identical watermarks that can be dated circa 1633.6 Tobias and the Angel and The Lamentation belong to a small group of prints in which Segers created tone using a new and labour-intensive technique (cf. HB 12, inv. no. RP-P-OB-832; HB 18, inv. no. RP-P-H-OB-804; HB 34, RP-P-OB-849; HB 41, inv. no. RP-P-H-OB-857; and HB 42, inv. no. RP-P-H-OB-858). This fact and the dating of the watermarks on both impressions of Tobias and the Angel indicate that they are late works by Segers, if not his last.
Segers's ambition to etch narrative scenes evidently manifested itself late, or was realized only towards the end of his life. In his landscapes, human figures play only a subsidiary role and, in general, are so small that it is difficult to determine how adept he was at drawing them.7 That his two narrative scenes and his only animal depiction (HB 52, inv. no. RP-P-H-OB-865) rely strongly on prints by other artists suggests he was not particularly confident with figural subject-matter. The rendering of the figures in Segers’s religious prints closely follows their models, while their execution and technique differ entirely.
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. 1589/90.8 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.9 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.10
Hercules’ father was a merchant in Haarlem and Amsterdam, but chose for his son another profession.11 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.12 Following Van Coninxloo’s death, Segers undoubtedly finished his training in another workshop. However, no documents have survived to confirm this.13
In 1612 Segers left Amsterdam and settled in Haarlem. His name appears in the registration of the Guild of St. Luke of 1612.14 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-?).15 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.16 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 1631.17 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).18 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.19 His name does not appear again in the archives, not even in burial records. He probably died between 1633 and 1640.20
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’).21 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.22 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.23 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.24
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
For The Lamentation of Christ, Segers relied on a woodcut by Hans Baldung (c. 1484-1545) from circa 1515 (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-4077).25 Copying or making variations of prints by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) and his contemporaries had been a fairly common practice among Netherlandish printmakers from 1590. Segers’s copy of Baldung’s woodcut, however, is difficult to reconcile with this so-called Dürer Renaissance; the execution deviates too much from his model.26
As in his Tobias and the Angel (HB 1, inv. no. RP-P-OB-796), Segers closely followed the figures from the original. He faithfully adopted Baldung’s strongly foreshortened dead Christ, the weeping Marys and St John. At the right he added a few tiny buildings that introduce a rural element into the scene. However, he eliminated the lower portions of the three crosses with the glimpses of the bound feet of the thieves, which form the background of the woodcut. He also reduced the scene somewhat at the bottom, turning it into an almost square composition. These alterations heighten the sense of drama, focusing all attention on the dead Christ and the suffering and sorrow of his followers. However, it was primarily in the exceptional execution and dramatic illumination that Segers’s print surpassed that of its model.
As in Tobias and the Angel, Segers created a ground tone by applying a network of delicate hatching in the etching ground. In the current impression, printed in black, this hatching is clearly visible in the upper right corner (another impression in black ink is kept at the Art Institute of Chicago: HB 2e, inv. no. 52.250). Next he drew highlights in many places with a brush and stopping-out varnish, before etching the plate for the first time. He drew a pattern of fine crosshatching in stopping-out varnish around the group of figures, as can be seen in the upper left corner of the impressions. After the first biting, Segers covered the plate with a new layer of etching ground and drew the contours and shadows of the figures and objects. Printed in black ink, the grey tonalities - alternating with white reserves - and the black contours of Segers’s prints recall Italian chiaroscuro woodcuts printed in grey. Closer still are the prints done in a combination of etching with a tone block in greyish-blue with which Crispijn van den Broeck (1524-1590/91) experimented in Antwerp circa 1570 (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1886-A-10318).27 Whether Segers knew these examples or whether the resemblance is coincidental is difficult to determine.
With the three other surviving impressions of this plate, all printed in blue (e.g. HB 2b, inv. no. RP-P-OB-798), which were then overpainted with various colours of oil paint, Segers was after a completely different effect than the impressions in black ink.
Huigen Leeflang, 2016
J. Springer, Die Radierungen des Herkules Seghers, 3 vols., Berlin 1910–12, no. 2a; W. Fraenger, Die Radierungen des Hercules Seghers: Ein physiognomischer Versuch, Erlenbach-Zurich and elsewhere 1922, p. 88; G. Knuttel Wzn., Hercules Seghers, Amsterdam [1941], pp. 12, 33-35; L.C. Collins, Hercules Seghers, Chicago, 1953, pp. 89-91, 133; W. Stechow, 'Review of Hercules Seghers, Leo C. Collins', Art Bulletin 36 (1954), p. 242; E. Trautscholdt, 'Neues Bemühen um Hercules Seghers', Imprimatur 12 (1954-55), p. 83; E. Haverkamp-Begemann, Hercules Segers: The Complete Etchings, with a Supplement on Johannes Ruischer by E. Trautscholdt, Amsterdam and The Hague 1973, no. 2a, pp. 29-30, 44 (incl. n. 83), 45 (n. 84); J. Rowlands, Hercules Segers, Amsterdam 1979, pp. 15, 17, no. 49; F.W.H. Hollstein, Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, ca. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1949-2010, XXVI (1981; Segers), no. 2a; J. van der Waals, De prentschat van Michiel Hinloopen. Een reconstructie van de eerste openbare papierkunstverzameling in Nederland, The Hague and Amsterdam 1988, Appendix 7, no. HB 2a; A. Stijnman, Engraving and Etching, 1400-2000: A History of the Development of Manual Intaglio Printmaking Processes, London and Houten 2012, p. 217 (fig. 197); 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 2a
H. Leeflang, 2016, 'Hercules Segers, The Lamentation of Christ [HB 2a], Amsterdam, c. 1630 - c. 1633', in J. Turner (ed.), Works by Hercules Segers in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.37242
(accessed 25 April 2024 02:43:07).