Hercules Segers
Segers, Hercules
Hercules Seghers Hercules Pietersz. Seghers Hercules Pietersz. Segers Hercules Pietersz. Seegers Hercules Pietersz. Zegers Hercules Pietersz. Zeghers Herkeles Pietersz. Seghers
<p>Relatively little-known today, the “great” Hercules Segers, as he was dubbed by his contemporaries, was one of the most original and inventive Dutch painters and printmakers of the 17th century. While there are many gaps in our knowledge of his life and only a few works by him survive (just 18 known paintings and 53 prints), the ones that do attest to his radically experimental approach, and to his considerable influence on later artists, from his near-contemporary <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artists/40769/rembrandt-van-rijn" target="_blank">Rembrandt</a> to 20th-century avant-garde figures such as <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artists/34418/max-ernst" target="_blank">Max Ernst</a>.&nbsp;</p><p>Born in Haarlem to Flemish emigré parents, Segers spent most of his professional life in Amsterdam. He specialized in producing small, dreamlike landscapes populated by craggy rock formations, creeping vegetation, and picturesque ruins. His unique approach to printmaking, which included an unusual combination of techniques, hand coloring of impressions, and printing on uncommon materials like fabric or Asian paper, made each print more like a distinct work of art than a multiple of the same image.&nbsp;</p><p>The only two prints by Segers in which the human figure appears are partial copies of prints by other artists. In the Art Institute’s rare <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artworks/77123/the-lamentation" target="_blank"><em>Lamentation</em></a>, a print of which there are only five known examples, Segers isolated the mourning figures and the foreshortened body of Christ from <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artworks/20574/the-lamentation" target="_blank">a much earlier woodcut</a> by the German printmaker <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artists/34739/hans-baldung-grien" target="_blank">Hans Baldung Grien</a>. Using a complex combination of techniques, Segers created distinctive effects of texture and tonality. In <a href="https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/collectie/RP-P-OB-796" target="_blank"><em>Tobias and the Angel</em></a>, made around 1633, Segers copied the figures from <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artworks/84281/tobias-and-the-angel" target="_blank">an engraving</a> by <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artists/10073/hendric-de-goudt" target="_blank">Hendrick Goudt</a> after Adam Elsheimer, placing them in a lush landscape of his own invention.&nbsp;</p><p>The copper plate for <em>Tobias and the Angel</em> was later acquired by <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artists/40769/rembrandt-van-rijn" target="_blank">Rembrandt</a>, who also owned eight paintings by Segers. Around 1652, Rembrandt reworked Segers’s copper plate, erasing much of the right side of the image, and transforming the subject from Tobias and the Angel to a <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artworks/50177/the-flight-into-egypt-altered-from-seghers" target="_blank"><em>Flight into Egypt</em></a>, an impression of which is in the Art Institute’s collection. Relatively untouched, the landscape on the left still displays Segers’s idiosyncratic technique and its characteristic textural effects. With this physical incorporation of Segers’s work into his oeuvre, Rembrandt paid homage to one of the most enigmatic and experimental artists in the history of printmaking.</p>
Hercules Segers
Dutch, 1589/90-1633/40