View through the Window of Segers’s House towards the Noorderkerk [HB 41]

Inscriptions

stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the City of Amsterdam (L. 11)

Technical notes

One state (unique impression).

Condition

The ground shows fine, horizontal cracks; vertical folds on both sides across entire surface, resulting in cracks in ground; the verso is brown from the oil-based binding medium in the ground having permeated the linen.

Provenance

...; collection Michiel Hinloopen (1619-1708), Amsterdam;¹According to L. 11. by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam (L. 11), 1708; from which on loan to the museum (L. 2228a), since 1885

ObjectNumber: RP-P-H-OB-857

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam

Context

Castles, Ruins and Other Buildings

The buildings in Segers’s topographical prints and paintings are usually depicted from a great distance and subsumed in the landscape. Architecture, however, did capture his interest, but judging from the buildings encountered in his etchings, they are primarily related to structures from a far-flung past: imaginary or not, they are medieval castles, ancient ruins or old houses.²See 'Castles, Ruins and Other Buildings', in E. Haverkamp-Begemann, Hercules Segers: The Complete Etchings, with a Supplement on Johannes Ruischer by E. Trautscholdt, Amsterdam and The Hague 1973, pp. 37-39. Moreover, in seventeenth-century inventories, mention is made of four small painted 'ruins' ('ruïnes') by his hand.³At his death in 1627, the art dealer Louis Rocourt (1599-1627) had two small 'ruyntges' by Segers in his shop (see A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der holländischen Kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts, 8 vols., The Hague 1915-22 (Quellenstudien zur holländischen Kunstgeschichte, 5-7, 10-14), II (1916), p. 444). In 1627 Johannes de Renialme (c. 1600-1657) owned a 'ruins' by Segers valued at 15 guilders (ibid., I (1915), p. 13). In an estate inventory of a house in The Hague drawn up by the occupant Hendrick Heuck (c. 1600-1677) in 1669, 'a ruins by Hercules' ('een ruwintien van Hercules') is mentioned. The Hague, Gemeentearchief, Notary D. van den Bossche, NA 826, dated 10 January 1669. The structure of stones and dilapidated, overgrown walls, like the weathered rocks in mountain landscapes, appear to be an ideal subject for Segers’s restless etching needle and graphic experiments.

Huigen Leeflang, 2016

The artist

Biography

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

No baptismal record has been found, but he was probably born in Haarlem in c. 1589/90.⁴This summary is based on J. van der Veen, ‘”Hercules Segers, disregarded and yet a great artist”: A Sketch of his Life’, in 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, pp. 17-36. 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.⁵Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, DTB 418, p. 280 (27 December 1614); Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, Notary J. Warnaertz, NA 691(III), fol. 43r-v (25 March 1623). 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.⁶Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, DTB 420, p. 267 (13 August 1616).

Hercules’ father was a merchant in Haarlem and Amsterdam, but chose for his son another profession.⁷In 1607 Peter Segers gave his age as forty-three and his occupations as ‘grocer’ (‘crudenier’); Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, Notary F. van Banchem, NA 5075, inv. no. 262, fols. 252v-253 (5 April 1607); I.H. van Eeghen, ’De ouders van Hercules Segers’, Maandblad Amstelodamum 55 (1968), no. 4, pp. 74-75. 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.⁸The inventory of Van Coninxloo mentions a debt of 16 guilders and 9 stuivers owed by Pieter Segers for his son’s training; Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, Notary F. van Banchem, NA 262, fols. 68v-88 (11-19 January 1607), esp. fol. 85v. Following Van Coninxloo’s death, Segers undoubtedly finished his training in another workshop. However, no documents have survived to confirm this.⁹J. van der Veen, ‘”Hercules Segers, disregarded and yet a great artist”: A Sketch of his Life’, in 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, p. 19.

In 1612 Segers left Amsterdam and settled in Haarlem. His name appears in the registration of the Guild of St. Luke of 1612.¹⁰H. Miedema, De archiefbescheiden van het St. Lukasgilde te Haarlem, 2 vols., Alphen aan den Rijn 1980, II, p. 1035. 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-?).¹¹Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, DTB 418, p. 280 (27 December 1614). 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.¹²Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, Archive 5062, inv. no. 39, fol. 382 (14 May 1619). 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 1631.¹³Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, Archive 5061, inv. no. 2166, fol. 90 (4 January 1631); the official transfer took place on 25 November 1632; see J.Z. Kannegieter, ‘Het huis van Hercules Segers op de Lindengracht te Amsterdam’, Oud Holland 59 (1942), nos. 5/6, p. 155; Het Utrechts Archief, Notary G. van Waey, NA U019a003, vol. 118, fol. 106r-v (15 May 1631). 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).¹⁴J. van der Veen, ‘”Hercules Segers, disregarded and yet a great artist”: A Sketch of his Life’, in 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, p. 28. 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.¹⁵The Hague, Gemeentearchief, Notary G. van Warmenhuysen, NA 18, fol. 177r-v, (28 January 1633); Ibid., NA 18, fol. 179r-v (13 February 1633); 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. His name does not appear again in the archives, not even in burial records. He probably died between 1633 and 1640.¹⁶J. van der Veen, ‘”Hercules Segers, disregarded and yet a great artist”: A Sketch of his Life’, in 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, p. 29.

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’).¹⁷The Hague, Gemeentearchief, Notary G. van Warmenhuysen, NA 18, fol. 177r-v (28 January 1633). 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.¹⁸J. van der Veen, ‘”Hercules Segers, disregarded and yet a great artist”: A Sketch of his Life’, in 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, p. 19 (n. 31). 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.¹⁹See the first appendix in ibid., pp. 17-36. 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.²⁰Ibid., p. 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

Segers kept close to home in this etching of a view of Amsterdam’s Noorderkerk. Framed by parts of a wall, a windowsill and open shutters, the artist shows us his view from a window on the top floor of his house on the Lindengracht. At that date, the opposite side of the canal was not yet fully built up. Segers looked out on the fences, gardens and rear elevations of the Noordermarkt. The somewhat messy sixteenth-century houses are rendered in detail in the etching. Rising behind them is the Noorderkerk, the church designed by Hendrick de Keyser (1565-1621) and built between 1621 and 1623.

The print is executed in the same technique as The Tomb of the Horatii and Curiatii (HB 45, inv. no. RP-P-H-OB-859) and printed on linen primed with a yellowish-white ground. It may be a counterproof. Because of this, the representation is reversed with respect to a normal print, with the advantage that Segers’s view is in the right direction. As the Italian painter, architect and writer Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) explained, 'First I trace as large a quadrangle as I wish, with right angles on the surface to be painted; in this place, it [the rectangle] certainly functions for me as an open window through which the historia is observed ….'²¹L.B. Alberti, On Painting: A New Translation and Critical Edition, ed. by R. Sinisgalli, New York 2011, I, 19, p. 39. On this often quoted, but misused passage, see also J. Masheck, 'Alberti’s ‘Window’: Art-historiographic Notes on an Antimodernist Misprision', Art Journal 50 (1991), pp. 34-41. Even though Segers would not have been familiar with Alberti’s famous comparison of a painting to a view through an open window, his etching is nonetheless a striking illustration of it. Around the same time as Segers, Jan Porcellis (c. 1584-1632) included a comparable invention in two small paintings in which he framed a view of the sea with ships with a painted window, one in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich (inv. no. 5742), and the other currently untraced.²²In addition to the version in Munich, dated 1629, an earlier painting by Porcellis is documented with a seascape framed by a window with open shutters. Originally from the collection of Emperor Wilhelm II (1859-1941), this painting was last seen in 1929 (sale, Cologne, 2 May 1929, no. 213, pl. 14). Whether Segers’s invention influenced Porcellis or vice versa, or whether each arrived at the idea independently cannot be established at present; E. Haverkamp-Begemann, Hercules Segers: The Complete Etchings, with a Supplement on Johannes Ruischer by E. Trautscholdt, Amsterdam and The Hague 1973, p. 23 (n. 47), and under no. 41; J. Walsh, 'The Dutch Marine Painters Jan and Julius Porcellis: Jan’s Maturity and ‘de jonge Porcellis', Burlington Magazine 116 (1974), no. 861, p. 738 (n. 20).

Segers incorporated several houses of his opposite neighbours in the painting of a panoramic valley, now in Museum Boijmans-Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (P 3, inv. no. 2525 (OK)).²³H. 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 3. In common with this painted capriccio, the present etching includes meticulously rendered existing buildings set in imaginary surroundings.²⁴W. Hofmann, 'Das Capriccio als Kunstprinzip', in E. Mai (ed.), Das Capriccio als Kunstprinzip: Zur Vorgeschichte der Moderne von Archimboldo und Callot bis Tiepolo und Goya, exh. cat. Cologne (Wallraf-Richartz Museum)/Zurich (Kunsthaus)/Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Palast Harrach) 1996-97, pp. 22-33. In reality, Segers would have seen not only the Noorderkerk from his window, but also the houses on Prinsengracht. In the print, however, he replaced his actual view with an imaginary landscape scattered with trees stretching out to the horizon.

Huigen Leeflang, 2016

Literature

J. Springer, Die Radierungen des Herkules Seghers, 3 vols., Berlin 1910-12, no. 49 (Die Ansicht aus dem Fenster), pl. XXXVII; De Roever 1883, pp. 51-52; W. Fraenger, Die Radierungen des Hercules Seghers: Ein physiognomischer Versuch, Erlenbach-Zurich and elsewhere 1922, pp. 52-53; R. Grosse, Die holländische Landschaftskunst, 1600-1650, 2nd edn., Stuttgart 1925, pp. 99, 121 (n. 150); 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, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXX (1936), p. 447; G. Knuttel Wzn., Hercules Seghers, Amsterdam [1941], pp. 29, 35-36; J.Z. Kannegieter, ‘Het huis van Hercules Segers op de Lindengracht te Amsterdam‘, Oud Holland 59 (1942), pp. 150-57; L.C. Collins, Hercules Seghers, Chicago 1953, pp. 56-57, 63 (fig. 66); J.G. van Gelder, 'Hercules Seghers: Addenda', Oud Holland 68 (1953), p. 153; E. Trautscholdt, ‘Neues Bemühen um Hercules Seghers‘, Imprimatur 12 (1954-55), p. 80 (fig. 13); J.Z. Kannegieter, ‘Wie was de bouwmeester van de Noorderkerk te Amsterdam?‘, Oud Holland 77 (1962), pp. 240-45; J.G. van Gelder, ‘The Labors of Hercules Seghers‘, Art News 66 (1967), no. 5, p. 26; J. Walsh, ‘Jan and Julius Porcellis‘, PhD diss., New York (Columbia University) 1970, p. 192; E. Haverkamp-Begemann, Hercules Segers: The Complete Etchings, with a Supplement on Johannes Ruischer by E. Trautscholdt, Amsterdam and The Hague 1973, no. 41, and pp. 37-38, 44-45 (n. 84), 47, 53-54, 58; J. Rowlands, Hercules Segers, Amsterdam 1979, no. 36; F.W.H. Hollstein, Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, ca. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1949-2010, XXVI (1981; Hercules Segers), no. 41; 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 41

Citation

H. Leeflang, 2016, 'Hercules Segers, View through the Window of Segers’s House towards the Noorderkerk [HB 41], Amsterdam, c. 1622 - c. 1630', in J. Turner (ed.), Works by Hercules Segers in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.37294

(accessed 26 April 2025 09:01:30).