One state.

The thick ground has cracks over the entire surface; a piece of the ground has come loose in the lower left corner and partially been put back; the paper is torn on the edge, right of the centre; light brown spotting in various places; verso: lined with eighteenth-century (?) paper.

…; collection Michiel Hinloopen (1619-1708), Amsterdam;¹¹According 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

Object number: RP-P-H-OB-863

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam

Seascapes and Ships

Seascapes and ships would not seem to be the most obvious subjects for a painter specialized in mountain landscapes. Yet a few individuals successfully combined both genres, such as the Haarlem painter Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen (1575/77-1633). While Segers does not appear to have painted any seascapes, he did make several prints with marine subjects.²²Offered at the 1748 sale of the collection of prints and drawings assembled by Gerrit Schaak (? - before October 1748) was '1 Drawing of old ships, by Hercules Segers' ('1 Tekening met oude Scheepen, door Hercules Zeegers'); see F. Lugt, Répertoire des catalogues de ventes publiques intéressant l’art ou la curiosité, 4 vols., The Hague and Paris 1938-87, I (1938), no. 689. This might have been an impression of an etching on prepared paper worked up with the brush, like the small frieze (HB 50), which could also easily pass as a drawing.

Accurately rendering sailing ships presents a special challenge to printmakers. One of the earliest engravers, Master W with the Key (fl. c. 1465-90), already ventured a series of nine ships’ portraits in which he painstakingly attempted to render the complex interplay of the overlapping lines of the masts, sails and rigging (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-2014-30).³³F.W.H. Hollstein, Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, ca. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1949-2010, XII (1955), pp. 220-22, nos. 34-41; and A.W. Sleeswyk, 'The Engraver Willem a Cruce and the Development of the Chain-Whale', The Mariner’s Mirror 76 (1990), no. 3, pp. 345-61. Another aspect of ships at sea, namely the struggle against the elements, fascinated artists of old. The vulnerability and puniness of ships crossing immensely vast seas, exposed to the destructive forces of nature, constitutes a rewarding subject for artists. It is hardly surprising that with his keen eye for nature’s overwhelming power and man’s insignificance, so masterfully conveyed in his mountain landscapes, Segers would have been drawn to this subject.⁴⁴For a concise overview and a comparison of Segers’s seascapes to ones by contemporaries, such as Hendrik Vroom (1562/63-1640), Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen and Jan Porcellis (1584-1632), see E. Haverkamp-Begemann, Hercules Segers: The Complete Etchings, with a Supplement on Johannes Ruischer by E. Trautscholdt, Amsterdam and The Hague 1973, pp. 39-41. For the iconography and popularity of stormy seascapes in seventeenth-century Dutch art, see L.O. Goedde, Tempest and Shipwreck in Dutch and Flemish Art, London 1989; R. Falkenburg, 'Onweer bij Jan van Goyen. Artistieke wedijver en de markt voor het Hollandse landschap in de 17de eeuw', Natuur en landschap in de Nederlandse kunst, 1500-1850/Nature and Landscape in Netherlandish Art, 1500-1850, Zwolle 1998 (Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 48), pp. 116-61.

Huigen Leeflang, 2016

The attribution of a small frieze with ships (HB 50) remains beyond doubt: the etching exhibits all of the characteristics of Segers’s hand and is printed on prepared paper with a coloured ground and worked up with grey paint. Moreover, the two extant impressions come from the oldest, most important collections with prints by Segers, namely those of Michiel Hinloopen (1619-1708) in Amsterdam (HB 50a, the present work) and Jacob Houbraken (1698-1780), now in the Kupferstich-Kabinett Dresden (HB 50b, inv. no. A 49378). Both impressions display the right and left half respectively of a frieze with thirty ships. In roughly the middle of the frieze is a three-master, which occurs in both impressions. This indicates that they are two impressions of the same plate and not two halves of a frieze that had been separated. The composition of the ground and the colouration with grey paint differs significantly in each impression. Both feature various types of ships, including barges, fishing vessels (herring boats), merchantmen and pinnaces (small warships).

Depictions of large numbers of ships usually portray naval battles or royal receptions, but this heterogeneously assembled fleet does not represent any specific historical event.²²²²The ships are not represented on the open sea, as assumed by E. Haverkamp-Begemann, Hercules Segers: The Complete Etchings, with a Supplement on Johannes Ruischer by E. Trautscholdt, Amsterdam and The Hague 1973, p. 40. Most have no sails and ride at anchor. For seventeenth-century prints with depictions of ships, see I. de Groot and R. Vorstman, Zeilschepen. Prenten van Nederlandse meesters van de zestiende tot de negentiende eeuw, Maarssen 1980; M. de Haan, Het rijk van Neptunus. Maritieme prenten rond de Gouden Eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Maritiem Museum Prins Hendrik) 1996-97. The etching shows an active roadstead with all kinds of ships dropping anchor, making ready for departure, sailing away or drawing near.²³²³The identification of the ships and of the subject in its entirety was done by Jeroen van der Vliet, former curator of the Rijksmuseum’s maritime collections, for whose help I am grateful. The roadstead of Amsterdam was often depicted from the north, with the city in the background, as in the engraved Profile of Amsterdam by Pieter Bast (c. 1570-1605) of 1599 (F.W.H. Hollstein, Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, ca. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1949-2010, I (1949), no. 8). From his house on the Lindengracht, it was only a few minutes’ walk to the IJ estuary, where Segers could have seen sundry ships at anchor or under sail. He depicted the types of vessels and their rigging with great precision and with an eye for detail. However, one wonders whether Segers actually drew the vessels from life. The three-master in the middle that occurs in the impressions of both prints is an exact copy of the large ship in an anonymous woodcut now known to be after a design by Van Wieringen (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-6653).²⁴²⁴Long attributed to Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617), this woodcut is now considered to be by an anonymous woodcutter after a design by Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen; see N. Bialler, Chiaroscuro Woodcuts: Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617) and his Time, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Cleveland (Cleveland Museum of Art) 1992-93, no. 60; M. Leesberg (comp.), The New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700: Hendrick Goltzius, 4 vols., Ouderkerk aan den IJssel 2012, no. R 52. Moreover, the small ship in the left foreground of the impression in Dresden (HB 50b) is a repetition, in reverse, of the barge in the background of the same woodcut.

Segers obviously must have borrowed more ships from prints designed by specialists such as Van Wieringen. For instance, the large merchantman at the middle right in the impression in Amsterdam is suspiciously close to a ship by the Haarlem marine painter Hendrik Vroom (1562/63-1640) found in an engraving published in Amsterdam (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-80.496). This does not alter the fact that Segers must have been fascinated by ships. In addition to the small frieze, he also made a large etching of a ship, no complete impression of which has been preserved. Segers cut up the plate and used sections of it for three etchings of mountain landscapes. He did not polish out fragments of the bow, masts and rigging, but retained them as freakish elements in the landscapes (HB 8, inv. no. RP-P-H-OB-819, HB 17, inv. no. RP-P-1951-528, and HB 21, inv. no. RP-P-H-OB-825).²⁵²⁵J. van der Waals, De prentschat van Michiel Hinloopen. Een reconstructie van de eerste openbare papierkunstverzameling in Nederland, The Hague and Amsterdam 1988, p. 144, suggested that the ship portrait was the 'masterpiece' ('proefstuk') about which Van Hoogstraten wrote, but this does not seem likely. The reconstruction of the original plate suggests it must have measured approximately 450 x 500 mm and contained an exceptionally large depiction of a ship. Segers probably cut the plate into pieces because something went amiss during the etching process. Some lines that are still visible in the landscapes were so deeply bitten that the ink remained in them while the etching was being printed and so all that shows is their edges.

There are two unique impressions of prints of ships that at first sight seem to have little in common with Segers’s etchings (HB 51a, Dresden, Kupferstich-Kabinett, inv. no. A 49385; and HB 51b, Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. no. 442-119). They are a kind of outline etching executed entirely in line, without any tone or shadow. Segers’s hand, which can even be discerned in the fragments of ships in the cut plate, is entirely missing in these prints. Haverkamp-Begemann nevertheless retained the attribution to Segers of the print in Dresden (HB 51a), albeit somewhat hesitantly.²⁶²⁶Haverkamp-Begemann spoke of a 'lightly traditional' attribution, which he maintained with the argument that: 'there are sufficient analogies in the lines of these ships and the fragments of the one Segers etched on a plate before cutting it into pieces' (best visible in HB 17 II b, HB 17 II c and HB 21 II b). The stiff lines of the outline etchings, however, have nothing in common with the lively handwriting of the ships’ fragments in the landscapes. It is not clear why the print in Dresden (HB 51a) has continued to be accepted as autograph and the virtually identically drawn and etched print in Berlin has not (HB 51b). An argument for the attribution is that the print includes two ships found in Segers’s small frieze: the ship on the far right in the outline etching in Dresden is identical to the abovementioned merchantman in the middle of the present impression (HB 50a). The flatter ship in the middle of the print in Dresden agrees with the ship on the right in the Amsterdam sheet. The same craft is also depicted on the right of the comparable line etching in Berlin (HB 51b). The latter also includes four vessels that occur in the small frieze as well.²⁷²⁷In the etching in Berlin (HB 51b) we again see the following crafts (from left to right): the large ship in HB 50b; the vessel without sails in the middle of HB 50a, and the second and third ship on the far right in HB 50; see J. Springer, Die Radierungen des Herkules Seghers, 3 vols., Berlin 1910-12, under no. 57; E. Haverkamp-Begemann, Hercules Segers: The Complete Etchings, with a Supplement on Johannes Ruischer by E. Trautscholdt, Amsterdam and The Hague 1973, under no. 50. Both line etchings are thus derived from the same models, either preparatory studies or prints that have not survived.

There is a possibility that the two prints are very early works by the artist himself. However, they are quite stiffly and naively drawn, while even Segers’s earliest known works already exhibit his characteristic handling (e.g., HB 28 and HB 35). Despite the prints’ larger format, the rigging of the ships in both, moreover, is less detailed and convincingly depicted than in the small frieze (HB 50a and HB 50b). On the other hand, the etching in Dresden is printed in brown and the one in Berlin in grey, colours of ink rarely used by other seventeenth-century printmakers. An alternative scenario is that the prints were made by another printmaker after Segers’s drawings at his request. Both etchings look unfinished: the transition between the ships and the water on which they float is indicated with interrupted lines. This vague boundary between the water and the ship is connected to their function. They were more than likely meant to be entirely coloured in or overpainted.²⁸²⁸J. Springer, Die Radierungen des Herkules Seghers, 3 vols., Berlin 1910-12, under no. 57, already suggested this. Both sheets look like precursors of the images in modern colouring books. Are we here dealing with the genesis of Segers’s 'print paintings'? Did he perhaps in the first instance have someone else make an etching for him to overpaint, only subsequently to pick up the etching needle himself in order to obtain better results? Whatever the case, their lacklustre execution excludes both prints as autograph works by Segers; they are to be considered anonymous prints after his design. Judging from its format and abrupt trimming on the left, a substantial part of the representation is missing in the sheet in Dresden (HB 51a). It, too, probably had a frieze format, comparable to the sheet in Berlin (HB 51b) or perhaps even the much more elongated, extensive composition of the small frieze (HB 50a and HB 50b).

Huigen Leeflang, 2016

J.G.A. Frenzel, ‘Herkules Zegers, Zeitgenosse Paul Potter’s: Maler und Kupferstecher und Erfinder der Kunst, durch Kupferabdrücke mit mehreren Farben Gemälde nachzuahmen‘, Kunst-Blatt. [Beilage zu] Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände (Stuttgart) 23 [Morgenblatt 10], 1829-30, no. 8; G.K. Nagler, Neues allgemeines Künstler-Lexicon oder Nachrichten von dem Leben und den Werken der Maler, Bildhauer, Kupferstecher, Formschneider, Lithographen, 22 vols., Munich 1832-52, XXII (1852), no. 8; J. Springer, Die Radierungen des Herkules Seghers, 3 vols., Berlin 1910-12, no. 56a (Die kleinen Schiffe) pl. XXXVIII; W. Fraenger, Die Radierungen des Hercules Seghers: Ein physiognomischer Versuch, Erlenbach-Zurich and elsewhere 1922, pp. 29-30, 67; R. Grosse, Die holländische Landschaftskunst, 1600-1650, 2nd edn., Stuttgart 1925, p. 104; G. Knuttel Wzn., Hercules Seghers, Amsterdam [1941], p. 22; L.C. Collins, Hercules Seghers, Chicago 1953, p. 36 (fig. 37); J. Houplain, ‘Sur les estampes d’Hercules Seghers‘, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, ser. 6, no. 49 (1957), p. 153; W. Stechow, Dutch Landscape Painting of the 17th Century, London 1966, p. 112; E. Haverkamp-Begemann, Hercules Segers: The Complete Etchings, with a Supplement on Johannes Ruischer by E. Trautscholdt, Amsterdam and The Hague 1973, no. 50a (fig. 7) and pp. 39-40, 51 (incl. n. 88), 55 (n. 139); J. Rowlands, Hercules Segers, Amsterdam 1979, no. 72b; F.W.H. Hollstein, Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, ca. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1949-2010, XXVI (Hercules Segers), no. 50a; 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 50a

H. Leeflang, 2016, 'Hercules Segers, Frieze with Ships in a Roadstead [HB 50a], Amsterdam, c. 1615 - c. 1630', in J. Turner (ed.), Works by Hercules Segers in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200126291