One state. Watermark (lining paper): Arms of Rohan-Guéméné; similar to Laurentius, II, no. 282 (Middelburg, 1661).

Cracks in paint in sky on left and two large vertical cracks on right; the paper is mounted on a slightly larger sheet of paper with a watermark from the second half of the seventeenth century, the entire surface was then varnished (again?); the varnish has since darkened and coloured the yellowish-white lines brown, the sky green and the bricks reddish brown.

…; collection Pieter Cornelis, Baron van Leyden (1717-1788), Leiden;¹¹According to L. 240. his daughter, Françoise Johanna Gael-van Leyden (1745-1813), Leiden;²²According to L. 240. 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-862

Credit line: Transferred from the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (The Hague), 1816

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.³³See '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.⁴⁴At 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 abbey of Rijnsburg featured two times in etchings by Segers. The abbey of Rijnsburg, northwest of Leiden, was founded in 1133 as a Benedictine convent by Petronella van Lotharingen (c. 1082-1144), widow of Count Floris II (c. 1083-1121).²²²²For a concise history, see A.A.W. van Gestel, 'De geschiedenis van de Abdij van Rijnsburg', Delineavit et Sculpsit 13 (1994), pp. 3-6. The forty nuns and abbesses who lived there until 1574 came from noble Dutch families. The cloister was destroyed by the rebel Protestants during the Siege of Leiden in 1574. Along with the Haarlem ruins of Brederode Castle and the Huis te Kleef, the Abbey of Rijnsburg is one of the most frequently depicted medieval Dutch edifices.²³²³J. Bolten, 'De uitbeelding van de ruïne van Rijnsburg in de 17de en 18de eeuw', Delineavit et Sculpsit 13 (1994), pp. 7-16; idem et al., 'De uitbeelding van de ruïne van Rijnsburg in prent en tekening, 1600-1812. Catalogus', Delineavit et Sculpsit 13 (1994), pp. 17-120. It features in two etchings by Jan van de Velde (1593-1641) (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1898-A-20364X).²⁴²⁴Ibid., (nos. 2, 6); F.W.H. Hollstein, Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, ca. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1949-2010, XXXII-XXXIII (1989), nos. 174, 204. Like his rendering of Brederode, Segers here, too, chose an alternative vantage-point, namely a view of the north façade and what remained of the nave of the abbey seen from the south.

In this second, larger version of the Ruins of the Abbey of Rijnsburg (HB 46), Segers worked up a plate in a way that it could be used to make impressions with pale ink on a darker ground. The method he developed for this is far more complex and laborious than the regular etching technique of the small Ruins of the Abbey of Rijnsburg (HB 47).²⁵²⁵See A. Stijnman, 'Hercules Segers's Printmaking Techniques', 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. 75-90, and the entry on HB 15-24. According to J. Springer, Die Radierungen des Herkules Seghers, 3 vols., Berlin 1910-12, nos. 53-54, Segers made the small version before the large one. E. Haverkamp-Begemann (Hercules Segers: The Complete Etchings, with a Supplement on Johannes Ruischer by E. Trautscholdt, Amsterdam and The Hague 1973) assumed that both versions derived from the same drawing, but that the large version preceded the small one, and he reversed the numbering vis-à-vis Springer. However, everything indicates that the small version belongs among Segers’s early works and that he made the large version later. It would seem that the two versions and the various impressions were made with intervals of some years. The representation of the large version is virtually identical to that of the small one. Included in both are some sheep and a small figure of a man in the middle. In the large version (such as this work), this man now keeps company with a greyhound – on the far left. Judging from his clothing and cap, the figure is not a shepherd, but rather a city-dweller contemplating the imposing ruined walls.²⁶²⁶The pose is comparable to that of the civilian couple in the etching after Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617) looking up at the ruins of Brederode Castle (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-48.067). Other alterations with respect to the small version include the fact that the empty windows of the north façade on the second story are teeming with overgrowth and that the wall on the far right, which in the small version has a curious hole, is now repaired.

The most important differences between the large and the small version, however, relate to technique. In the large plate, Segers first created tone with crosshatching. The delicate pattern is clear to see in impressions in the passage of sky directly above the walls. In this grid, he etched the parts that would hold the light ink, and reserved the dark sections. For a second tooling, he covered the plate once more with etching ground and drew the contours of the ruin brick by brick and now etched the plate again, this time deeper. The six known impressions of this plate all differ in colour and tone, ranging from yellowish white combined with dark brown to white with a greyish brown. The result in each instance is a curiously diffuse, almost eerie depiction. In the present impression, the stones are painted red and the sky blue. The combination of overpainting and the printed yellowish-white lines yielded a hybrid artwork, a cross between a painting and a print.²⁷²⁷It is conceivable that among the three small ruins by Segers mentioned in seventeenth-century inventories, for instance that of 1669 of Heuck (Gemeentearchief, The Hague, Notary D. van den Bossche, NA 826, dated 10 January 1669), were one or more prints coloured with paint and affixed to a support, perhaps one of Segers’s painted etchings of the Ruins of the Abbey of Rijnsburg. The inventory drawn up after the death of Heuck in 1678 specifically mentions 'a small printed painting' ('een cleyn gedruckt schilderitie'). The price of 15 guilders assigned to the ruins owned by De Renialme seems, however, to be on the high side for a print. But it is possible that the present coloured impression of the large Ruins of the Abbey of Rijnsburg, which in a frame can hardly be distinguished from a painting, could indeed fetch such a price. Written in a seventeenth-century hand on a semi-coloured impression of the Distant View with a Road and Mossy Branches (HB 27 II p) is the price of 25 guilders (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. 73 (n. 156) and p. 240 (n. 103)).

Perhaps he intended to colour all of the impressions in this manner, but it is also possible that the unpainted examples were destined for the collectors’ albums and were meant to remain that way. Whether collectors admired these etchings for the historical subjects, the painterly rendering of a famous ruin, as an image of decay and transience, as a graphic tour de force, or as a combination of the above cannot be said for certain.²⁸²⁸For the perception of the rendering of ruins in seventeenth-century Dutch art, see B. Bakker, 'Oud maar niet lelijk. Oude gebouwen in de kunst van de zeventiende eeuw', in Oud en lelijk. Ouderdom in de cultuur van de Renaissance, Amsterdam 1996, Utrecht Renaissance Studies 3, pp. 37-55; H. Leeflang, 'Dutch Landscape: The Urban View: Haarlem and its Environs in Literature and Art, 15th-17th Century', in Natuur en landschap in de Nederlandse kunst, 1500-1850/Nature and Landscape in Netherlandish Art, 1500-1850, Zwolle 1998 (Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 48), pp. 78-79, 87-90; C. Levesque, 'Haarlem Landscapes and Ruins: Nature Transformed', in Poughkeepsie and elsewhere 2005-06, pp. 49-62.

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, no. 11a; J. Springer, Die Radierungen des Herkules Seghers, 3 vols., Berlin 1910-12, no. 54a (Die grosse Kirchenruine); W. Fraenger, Die Radierungen des Hercules Seghers: Ein physiognomischer Versuch, Erlenbach-Zurich and elsewhere 1922, pp. 30, 32ff., 38, 40-43, 52-53, 62, 83; R. Grosse, Die holländische Landschaftskunst, 1600-1650, 2nd edn., Stuttgart 1925, p. 100; G. Knuttel Wzn., Hercules Seghers, Amsterdam [1941], pp. 8, 12, 26; E. Trautscholdt, ‘Neues Bemühen um Hercules Seghers‘, Imprimatur 12 (1954-55), p. 82; W. van Leusden, Het grafisch-technisch probleem van de etsen van Hercules Seghers, Utrecht 1960, p. 11; H.R. Schneebeli, ‘Hercules Seghers: Die Radierungen‘, typescript, Zurich 1963, pp. 42-44; E. Haverkamp-Begemann, Hercules Segers: The Complete Etchings, with a Supplement on Johannes Ruischer by E. Trautscholdt, Amsterdam and The Hague 1973, no. 46a and pp. 49 (n. 107), 53 (n. 135), 54; J. Rowlands, Hercules Segers, Amsterdam 1979, no. 38; D. Freedberg, Dutch landscape prints of the seventeenth century, London 1980, pp. 46, 49; J. Bolten, ‘De uitbeelding van de ruïne van Rijnsburg in de 17de en 18de eeuw‘, Delineavit et Sculpsit 13 (1994), p. 10; J. Bolten et al., ‘De uitbeelding van de ruïne van Rijnsburg in prent en tekening, 1600-1812. Catalogus‘, Delineavit et Sculpsit 13 (1994), no. 9; 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. 46a; 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 46a

H. Leeflang, 2016, 'Hercules Segers, Ruins of the Abbey of Rijnsburg from the South: Large Version [HB 46a], Amsterdam, c. 1625 - c. 1630', in J. Turner (ed.), Works by Hercules Segers in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200126287