Christ and the Penitent Sinners

Gerard Seghers (Antwerp 1591 - Antwerp 1651)

The successful figure painter, Gerard Seghers was baptized in the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk, Antwerp, on 17 March 1591, the son of an innkeeper and wine merchant Jan Seghers and his wife Ida de Neve. In 1603/04, he was listed as a pupil in the records of the guild of St Luke (in that year the masters’ names were omitted). He became a master himself five years later in 1608/09 at the early age of seventeen. After 1611, he is not mentioned until 1620/21 when, presumably having established a studio, he is listed as having taken on the first two of his apprentices; subsequently his career in Antwerp becomes quite well documented.

Most likely in the intervening years he had worked for a time in Peter Paul Rubens’s studio, and then had made the journey to Rome whence he travelled to Madrid. A signed Salome and Herodias with St John the Baptist (Madrid, Palacio Real) suggests that he had access to Rubens’s studio around 1609-10 if not later.²²Jaffé (M. Jaffé, Rubens. Catalogo Completo, Milan 1989, no. 116) who dates Rubens’s Beheading of St John the Baptist – the main source of inspiration for the Seghers – 1609-10; Segher’s executioner, as Bieneck noted (D. Bieneck, Gerard Seghers 1591-1651 Leben und Werk des Antwerpener Historienmalers, Turnhout 1992, p. 46) derives from Rubens’s drawing in the Albertina, Vienna; this drawing – it has to be stated – is dated c. 1615-20 by Burchard and D’Hulst (L. Burchard and R.A. d’Hulst, Rubens Drawings, Brussels 1963, no. 112). That his early biographers refer to a sojourn in southern Europe is confirmed by a group of attributed works which demonstrate his participation in the Caravaggesque movement in Rome, an allegiance he was to maintain for a few years after his return to Antwerp. In Rome, he may also have made copies for the Antwerp market. His activity in Madrid is less clear and may have been of short duration, although in 1630 he was described as a painter ‘entretenu[s] de Sa Majesté’, that is King Philip IV of Spain (1605-1665).

On 28 November 1621, Seghers married in Antwerp Catherina Wouters; the eleventh and last child of this union was born in 1636. In 1631 he bought and remodelled in the Renaissance style a large house on the Meir. For both the Joyous Entries of the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand, into Ghent and into Antwerp in 1635, he contributed painted decorations. But he was not called on to assist Rubens in carrying out the commission to decorate the royal hunting lodge, the Torre de la Parada, outside Madrid. However, he was appointed painter to the Cardinal-Infante, and in 1645/46 he was nominated dean of the guild of St Luke. He had long been a member of the rhetoricians’ chamber, De Violieren, and since 1621/22 been connected with the Antwerp Jesuits’ association for married men. From 1631, he had been a member of the Confraternity of Romanists. He died on 18 March 1651 and was buried in Sint-Michielskerk.

No painting by Seghers was in Rubens’s collection when the latter died in 1640, nor does his work seem to have been greatly appreciated by King Philip IV of Spain. In contrast, the marquès de Leganés (1590?-1655) was a more assiduous collector of his work. A version of his Caravaggesque Calling of St Peter is depicted in Van Haecht’s Art Cabinet of Cornelis van der Geest of 1628,³³A. van Suchtelen and B. van Beneden, Room for Art in Seventeenth-Century Antwerp, exh. cat. Antwerp (Rubenshuis)/The Hague (Mauritshuis) 2009-10, no. 10. and he was patronized by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, governor of the Spanish Netherlands (1647-56). But probably his greatest patron was the Jesuit Order in the southern Netherlands.

Seghers rarely signed his paintings and for the most part eschewed collaborative work. Bieneck compiled 144 entries for dated or dateable works (some of which are only known through contemporary engravings)⁴⁴Sanzsalazar has added a small, additional group, see J. Sanzsalazar, ‘Gerard Seghers: Pintor en grande y en pequeño, nuevas pinturas identificadas’, Archivo Español de Arte 80 (2007), pp. 323-32. and 123 for lost paintings for which there is some documentation.

Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) drew his portrait to be engraved by Paul Pontius for inclusion in the Icongraphy.⁵⁵S. Turner and C. Depauw, The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, 1450-1700: Anthony van Dyck, 8 vols., Rotterdam 2002, II, no. 90. His self-portrait was later engraved by Pieter de Jode II (1606-1674) and published by Meijssens in his Image de divers hommes d’esprit sublime of 1649.⁶⁶F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700, Amsterdam/Roosendaal 1948-, IX, p. 219. It was later republished by Cornelis de Bie in Het gulden cabinet of 1662.⁷⁷C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vrij schilder const, inhoudende den lof vande vermartste schilders, architecte, beldtowers ende plaetsnijders van deze eeuwe, Antwerp s.a. (1662), p. 97.

REFERENCES
D. Bieneck, Gerard Seghers 1591-1651 Leben und Werk des Antwerpener Historienmalers, Turnhout 1992