A Rearing Horse before a Landscape [HB 52]

Inscriptions

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

Technical notes

One state (unique impression).

Condition

Ground has partly permeated the open weave of the cloth to the verso, especially at centre; the verso is partly bluish-grey from the ground having permeated the linen, and brown due to 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-865

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam

Context

Miscellaneous Subjects: A Rearing Horse, a Skull and a Still Life with Books

Three of Segers’s extant etchings have subjects he treated only once: a horse, a human skull and a still life with books. There is an impression of each in Amsterdam, all from the collection of Michiel Hinloopen (1619-1708), and there is a second impression of the Still Life with Books in the Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna (HB 54b, inv. no. DG1933/2193).

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. 1589/90.²This 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.³Amsterdam, 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.⁴Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, DTB 420, p. 267 (13 August 1616).

Hercules’ father was a merchant in Haarlem and Amsterdam, but chose for his son another profession.⁵In 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.⁶The 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.⁷J. 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 1612.⁸H. 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-?).⁹Amsterdam, 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.¹⁰Amsterdam, 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 1631.¹¹Amsterdam, 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).¹²J. 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.¹³The 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 1640.¹⁴J. 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. 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’).¹⁵The 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.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. 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.¹⁷See 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.¹⁸Ibid., 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

There are virtually no animals to be found in Segers’s etched or painted landscapes, other than a few birds, several tiny horses with riders and a team of oxen in the painting in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence (P 5, inv. no. 1303). For his two narrative etchings with large human figures (HB 1 and HB 2), Segers adapted prints by other masters, and he did so again for his only independent depiction of an animal, the present print of A Rearing Horse before a Landscape (HB 52). This is copied from an engraving by Egbert van Paenderen (c. 1580-c. 1637) after a design by the Italian artist Antonio Tempesta (1555-1630).¹⁹F.W.H. Hollstein, Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, ca. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1949-2010, XV (1964), p. 104, no. 56. It has also been suggested that Segers used a bronze sculpture of a horse as a model; see J. Springer, Die Radierungen des Herkules Seghers, 3 vols., Berlin 1910-12, under no. 60, with a reference to Wilhelm von Bode, who posited a bronze by Giambologna (1529-1608) as Segers’s model. See also J. van der Waals, De prentschat van Michiel Hinloopen. Een reconstructie van de eerste openbare papierkunstverzameling in Nederland, The Hague and Amsterdam 1988, p. 145 (figs. 187-89). The similarities with the engraving by Van Paenderen after Tempesta, however, are so numerous that Segers almost certainly used this as his source.

Segers followed fairly literally the contours of Tempesta’s horse in Van Paenderen's engraving (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-24.393), including the position of its fore- and hind legs, and its scrotum. Different is the pose of the neighing horse’s head, which Segers positioned straight on the neck rather than tilted, as in his model. Segers also reined in the flowing mane and tail of the Tuscan horse. The landscape in the background – with a walled city and mountains – was replaced by a typical flat, wooded panorama in Segers’s print. Whereas the two ambitious figural etchings (HB 1 and HB 2) are among his last known works, the horse, even though also copied from a print by someone else, belongs to the group of small early etchings on prepared cloth.²⁰HB 28, HB 35-36, HB 40, HB 47 and HB 53-54. The little circles at the upper left and in the middle are probably the remains of details from an earlier etching whose plate Segers cut up, a fragment of which he reused for his little horse. The Rijksmuseum's etching is the only known impression of this print.

Huigen Leeflang, 2016

Literature

J. Springer, Die Radierungen des Herkules Seghers, 3 vols., Berlin 1910-12, no. 60 (Das Pferd), pl. XXIII; W. Fraenger, Die Radierungen des Hercules Seghers: Ein physiognomischer Versuch, Erlenbach-Zurich and elsewhere 1922, pp. 80, 87 (fig. 32); R. Grosse, Die holländische Landschaftskunst, 1600-1650, 2nd edn., Stuttgart 1925, p. 100; G. Knuttel Wzn., Hercules Seghers, Amsterdam [1941], pp. 8, 14-15; L.C. Collins, Hercules Seghers, Chicago 1953, pp. 57-58, 100 (fig. 68); K.G. Boon, ‘Een notitie op een Seghers-prent uit de verzameling Hinloopen‘, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 8 (1960), p. 11 (fig. 65); E. Haverkamp-Begemann, Hercules Segers: The Complete Etchings, with a Supplement on Johannes Ruischer by E. Trautscholdt, Amsterdam and The Hague 1973, no. 52 and pp. 40, 47, 54-55 (n. 139); J. Rowlands, Hercules Segers, Amsterdam 1979, no. 74A; 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. 52; J. van der Waals, De prentschat van Michiel Hinloopen. Een reconstructie van de eerste openbare papierkunstverzameling in Nederland, The Hague and Amsterdam 1988, pp. 145-46 (figs. 187-89); 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 52

Citation

H. Leeflang, 2016, 'Hercules Segers, A Rearing Horse before a Landscape [HB 52], Amsterdam, c. 1618 - c. 1622', in J. Turner (ed.), Works by Hercules Segers in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.37302

(accessed 27 April 2025 21:46:41).