HERCULES SEGERS

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
October 7 2016–January 8 2017
Coinciding publication: Hercules Segers: Painter Etcher
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With a total of eighteen paintings and a hundred and ten impressions of fifty-four prints, Hercules Segers is the first exhibition to present a complete overview of the artist’s work. Most come from the Rijksmuseum, which holds the largest group of works of art by Hercules Segers in the world. The show also contains prints and paintings from public and private collections in Europe and the United States. An oeuvre catalogue of all the etchings and paintings accompanies the exhibition.

Hercules Segers (1589/90-1633/40) was an artist, like Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer and Rembrandt van Rijn, who wanted to fathom and reproduce the essence of nature and the world. Foliage, sky and rock could be better conveyed by constructing them from one’s own imagination, rather than trying to copy them exactly. He combined scenes ‘from life’ with imaginary elements, as he did in the view from his own house on Lindengracht in Amsterdam, which he placed in a mountain valley. There is no evidence that Segers ever travelled or saw mountains in real life.

Rembrandt was a great admirer of Segers’s work and owned eight of his paintings. He also acquired an etching plate from Segers’s estate and replaced the figures with some of his own, but he left the enchanting landscape untouched and printed it many times. Segers also found followers among Rembrandt’s pupils, such as Philips Koninck (1619-1688). Segers’s wonderfully coloured etchings remained popular with collectors and artists, but it was to be centuries – not until the twentieth century, in fact – before printmakers would experiment as freely again. Segers is consequently regarded as a pioneer of modern graphic art and modern art in general.

THE MYSTERIOUS LANDSCAPES OF HERCULES SEGERS

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
13 February–12 May 2017
Coinciding publication: Hercules Segers: Painter Etcher
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This exhibition is the first to display almost all of Segers’s prints in varying impressions alongside a selection of his paintings, and is the first large selection of his fascinating work to be shown in the United States.

The great experimental printmaker Hercules Segers (Dutch, ca. 1590–ca. 1638), one of the most fertile artistic minds of his time, created otherworldly landscapes of astonishing originality. With a unique array of techniques whose identification still puzzles scholars, he etched extraordinary, colorful landscapes and still lifes. Rejecting the idea that prints from a single plate should all look the same in black and white, he produced impressions in varied color schemes—painting them, then adding lines or cutting down the plate. Segers turned each impression of his evocative landscapes into unique miniature paintings that seem out of their time. He was a favorite artist of Rembrandt, who owned eight paintings and one printing plate by Segers.