Mountain Valley with Fenced Fields [HB 6 II e]

Second state of two (additions in drypoint in the foreground, including the shadows under the fencing on the right and in the centre around and on the tree stump and the bands of shadows across the fields, in particular on the left and on the rocks at left and right).

Top left corner torn off, made up, and coloured blue; this infill was torn and replaced by white paper.

...; ? 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 (L. 2228a), 1816

ObjectNumber: RP-P-OB-841

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

The Four Large Mountain Landscapes

Four of Segers’s etchings of mountain landscapes (HB 3-6) are significantly larger than his other extant prints. With their dimensions of approximately 300 x 500 mm or more, they are as big, if not bigger, than his small paintings. Two of these etchings have come down to us in unique impressions, both kept in the British Museum, London (HB 3, inv. no. 1840,0808.229 and HB 5, inv. no. S.5535); the others (HB 4 and HB 6) are known in four and six impressions, respectively. One impression was probably destroyed in the bombing of Munich on 12 July 1944 (HB 6 I c, formerly in the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich, inv. no. 9412), while another was discovered only recently and is kept in the Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid (HB 4 II d, inv. no. 41954). All four present a distant view in a valley enclosed by mountains and rocks. This similarity notwithstanding, the etchings vary greatly in both composition and atmosphere. A fairly barren and inhospitable setting with just a few buildings is depicted in three of them (HB 3-5), while one (HB 6), of which the museum has two impressions, presents a more cultivated and inhabited landscape. The great differences in atmosphere are due primarily to the colours of the ink and the way in which they are printed and sometimes worked up with the brush.

Segers’s mountain landscapes spring from the tradition of the sixteenth-century world landscapes developed by South Netherlandish painters such as Joachim Patinir (1480/85-1524), Lucas Gassel (1500-1568), Cornelis Metsijs (1510/11-1556/57) and Herri met de Bles (c. 1500-1553), which were continued and embroidered upon by Matthijs Cock (1509-1548), Gillis Mostaert (c. 1530-1598), Lucas Valckenborch (1535-1597), Kerstiaen de Keuninck (1560-1632), Hans Bol (1534-1593), Joos de Momper (1564-1635) and Segers’s teacher, Gillis van Coninxloo (1544-1606/07).³³For the development of the Flemish world landscape (Weltlandschaft), see H.G. Franz, Niederländische Landschafstmalerei im Zeitalter des Manierismus, 2 vols., Graz 1969; W.S. Gibson, Mirror of the Earth: The World Landscape in Sixteenth-century Flemish Painting, Princeton 1989; P. Huys Janssen, Panorama op de wereld. Het landschap van Bosch tot Rubens, exh. cat. ’s-Hertogenbosch (Noordbrabants Museum) 2001; and H. Benesch and W. Seipel (eds.), Die Flämische Landschaft, 1520-1700, exh. cat. Essen (Villa Hügel)/Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum) 2003-04.

The most immediate predecessors of Segers’s monumental prints are the large etchings with mountain landscapes after designs by Pieter Bruegel (1526/30-1569), which were executed around 1555 by the brothers Johannes (1528/32-1605) and Lucas van Doetecum (active 1554-72-before 1589) and published by Hieronymus Cock (1518-1570) in Antwerp (see inv. no. RP-P-OB-7364).⁴⁴N.M. Orenstein (ed.), Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Drawings and Prints, exh. cat. New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art)/Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen) 2001, nos. 22-34, 35; N.M. Orenstein, The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Ouderkerk aan den IJssel 2006, nos. 49-59, 60; J. van Grieken et al., Hieronymus Cock. De renaissance in prent, exh. cat. Leuven (M-Museum)/Paris (Fondation Custodia) 2013, nos. 107-08. W.S. Gibson, Mirror of the Earth: The World Landscape in Sixteenth-century Flemish Painting, Princeton 1989, pp. 60-75, analysed the formal innovations in Bruegel’s landscapes. B. Bakker, ‘Meanings Old and New: Bruegel, Ortelius, and Calvin’, in Landscape and Religion from Van Eyck to Rembrandt, Farnham 2012, pp. 143-74, gave an intriguing analysis and interpretation of Bruegel’s Large Landscapes as new representations of a universal world image, in which puny, mortal man is confronted with the overwhelming grandness of God’s creation. Segers must have been very familiar with these works, as well as with later large landscape prints such as the engravings after paintings by Van Coninxloo and David Vinckboons (1576-1631). However, in technique and subject, the latter were less relevant for him than the monumental etchings after Bruegel’s drawings.⁵⁵While Segers was learning the tools of his trade, extremely large engravings of landscapes by Nicolaes de Bruyn (1571-1656) and Johannes Londerseel (c. 1570/75-c. 1624/25) after Gillis van Coninxloo, David Vinckboons and Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625) appeared on the market; see L.A. Baines, The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, 1450-1700: Nicolaes de Bruyn, 2 pts., Ouderkerk aan den IJssel 2014, I, pp. XXV-XXX. In his landscape etchings, Segers almost appears to have been seeking the opposite of the well-considered compositions and technical perfection of these engravings. A relevant comparison with Segers’s large mountain landscapes is the gigantic Bohemian Landscape after Roelant Saverij (1576-1639) published by Jacob Matham (1571-1631) circa 1606, yet this print, too, is carefully composed and stiff compared to Segers’s rough and spontaneously executed mountain landscapes; see L. Widerkehr, The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, 1450-1700: Jacob Matham, 3 pts., Ouderkerk aan den IJssel 2007, III, no. 345.

Bruegel made the drawings on which these prints are based when he returned from his journey through the Alps. In general, they do not depict exact locations, but are interpretations of the overwhelming impressions the vertiginous mountains must have made on an artist from the flatlands of the Duchy of Brabant. Four prints include saints or biblical figures and thus fit squarely into the tradition of the originally religious world landscape; others are populated with secular travellers. It would be difficult to overestimate the influence of the large landscape etchings after Bruegel.⁶⁶For the influence of Bruegel’s landscapes, see S. Silver, Jacob van Ruisdael: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, Drawings and Etchings, New Haven and London 2001. Among the followers of Bruegel’s mountain landscapes, Silver counts the draftsmen and printmakers Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617) and Jacob Savery (c. 1565-1603), but not Hercules Segers. For connections between Bruegel’s landscapes and those by Segers, see T. Gerszi, 'Landschaftsdarstellungen von Pieter Bruegel und Hercules Seghers', Bruckmanns Pantheon 39 (1981), pp. 133-39; and T. Gerszi, 'Pieter Breughels Einfluss auf die Herausbildung der niederländischen See- und Küstenlandschaftsdarstellung', Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 24 (1982), pp. 143-87. In his Schilderboeck of 1604 Karel van Mander (1548-1606) praised the prints for their fidelity to nature and held them up as models for young artists, who thus without having to travel themselves could learn how to depict the rocky Alps and the dizzying depths of valleys, steep cliffs, tall pine trees, distant horizons and rushing streams.⁷⁷K. van Mander, Den grondt der edel vry schilder-const, ed. by H. Miedema, 2 vols., Utrecht 1973, pp. 210-11, 552. Another series of mountain landscapes praised by Van Mander is the one by Hieronymus Cock after Matthijs Cock; see J. van Grieken et al., Hieronymus Cock. De renaissance in prent, exh. cat. Leuven (M-Museum)/Paris (Fondation Custodia) 2013, no. 94. The subjects of the mountain views in Segers’s four large etchings are very close, and sometimes even seem to literally borrow from them. The layout of the composition and the space of Segers’s Mountain Valley with Dead Pine Trees and a City in the Background (HB 3, British Museum, London, inv. no. 1840,0808.229) strongly recalls Bruegel’s construction of his distant views with mounds, boulders and tree stumps in the foreground, paths and rivers winding through the landscape, and distant vistas in deep valleys that meet up with mountains in the background (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-7356). In his print, Segers employed the same motifs to lead the viewer’s eye into the landscape and to guide it along the road in the foreground, past the dead trees, to the city in the middle ground and the walls extending across the hills at the right, and further into the distance towards the lake or river and the mountain ridge in the background. The stronghold on the cliff at the left is also a recurring motif in Bruegel’s prints.

While comparable with respect to format and the suggestion of space and depth, there are also significant differences between the large landscape etching after Bruegel and those by Segers. The prints by the Van Doetecum brothers measure approximately 320 x 420 mm and thus are taller and less wide than the elongated etching plates on which Segers worked (approx. 300 x 500 mm).⁸⁸Segers’s etchings are usually trimmed inside the platemark and so the size of the etching plate cannot be precisely determined. The unique impression of the Mountain Valley with Dead Pine Trees and a City in the Background in the British Museum (HB 3) seems to be fairly abruptly cropped at the upper left. This suggests that the plate could have been roughly 10 mm higher than approximately 280 mm, but not as tall as the etching after Bruegel (c. 320 mm). Only Bruegel’s Large Alpine Landscape (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-7364), measuring 368 x 468 mm, comes close to the formats Segers used. In the mountain landscapes after Bruegel, the beholder’s vantage point is very high up and overlooks deep valleys from a bird’s-eye perspective; the horizon is always located in the upper half of the composition. Segers, by contrast, generally chose a substantially lower viewpoint and a horizon only one-third or one-quarter above the lower edge, but the British Museum's Mountain Valley with Dead Pine Trees and a City in the Background (HB 3) has a fairly high horizon and in terms of its compositional layout comes closer to Bruegel. Yet here, as well, the viewer has the sense of looking into the landscape from the foreground, rather than soaring above it. The combination of a low vantage point and a horizon with towering mountains or cliffs is a constant in Segers’s landscapes.

The Van Doetecum brothers translated Bruegel’s landscapes onto the copper-plate with crisp etched lines that create the impression of a copper-engraving. By comparison, Segers’s mountain landscapes are much more freely and spontaneously executed. The structure of stones, tree stumps, fields, roads and buildings is defined by a tangle of wriggling lines and fragments of lines, streaks and stipples that seem almost to have developed organically. The impressions of Bruegel prints published by Cock are neat and tidy; Segers’s large prints exhibit streaks and spots from foul biting and are printed from plates that were incompletely wiped, resulting in ink stains and plate tone. In terms of drawing and etching technique, the Mountain Valley with Dead Pine Trees and a City in the Background (HB 3) is the least subtle in the group of four large mountain landscapes. The schematic rendering, the scale of the buildings and the somewhat routine motif of the stronghold on the cliff strongly recall the prints after Bruegel, suggesting that it is the earliest of the four etchings. Determining a chronology for Segers’s prints, however, is problematic at best. Motifs such as the road with cart tracks, tree stumps, dead, or cypress-type trees feature in various prints. Moreover, in both motif and composition, the etching is related to Segers’s early paintings in the Rijksmuseum (P 7, inv. no. SK-A-3120) and in the Mauritshuis, The Hague (P 8, inv. no. 1033).

The composition the River Valley with Four Trees (e.g. HB 4 II d) agrees with that of Segers’s painting in the Mauritshuis, The Hague (P 8), albeit in reverse.⁹⁹The relationship was first noted by J.G. van Gelder in his article 'Hercules Seghers: Addenda', Oud Holland 68 (1953), no. 3, pp. 150-51, when the picture was still in the collection of Mrs E. Kessler-Stoop in IJmuiden. He suggested that the etching could have originated much later than the painting, whereas, according to E. Haverkamp-Begemann, Hercules Segers: The Complete Etchings, with a Supplement on Johannes Ruischer by E. Trautscholdt, Amsterdam and The Hague 1973, no. 4, the painting dates to before 1620 and the etching is from the same time. See also H. Leeflang, '"For he also Printed Paintings": Hercules Segers' Painterly prints', 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. 39-73, where a date of between 1625 and 1630 is opted for both. Compared to the etching, the painting is missing the top of the cliff and part of the sky, most likely because a strip of approximately 6.5 cm was cut from the panel. The painting’s composition, on the other hand, is broader and has a somewhat larger rocky outcropping.

Investigations of its extremely free underdrawing show that, while painting the panel, Segers introduced all kinds of changes in the houses, trees and figures.¹⁰¹⁰L.C. Collins, Hercules Seghers, Chicago 1953, p. 84, supposed that Segers would have used a counterproof of the etching to make the underdrawing. A. Wallert, ‘A Note on Technical Aspects of Prints and Paintings of Hercules Segers’, in A. Roy and P. Smith (eds.), Painting Techniques, History, Materials and Studio Practice: Contributions to the Dublin Congress, 7-11 September 1998, London 1998, passim, demonstrated that the etching must have originated after the painting was finished, and suggested that one and the same drawing must have served for both the painting and the print. Perhaps this was an oil sketch. In the print these details (e.g. in the houses and trees) correspond to the finished painting, indicating that the print was made after the panel. The height of the original painting must have been the same as this print and the other large etched mountain landscapes, namely approximately 28.5 cm, thus the same height as the painting in the Rijksmuseum (P 7, inv. no. SK-A-3120). It is entirely possible that the three other Large Landscapes were also made after paintings that are no longer known. Two large etchings have come down to us in unique impressions only (HB 3 and 5), with no corresponding painted model. It is thus conceivable that Segers executed other similar compositions, both as paintings and etched versions, which have been lost. The appearance of one such untraced painting is known thanks to a rapidly executed sketch by Leonaert Bramer (1596-1674) kept in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. RP-T-1886-A-704). It belongs to a group of sheets from circa 1652-53 in which Bramer drew copies of 107 paintings (mostly landscapes) that were then in the possession of Delft burghers, dealers and artists.¹¹¹¹M.C. Plomp, 'Een merkwaardige verzameling Teekeningen' door Leonaert Bramer', Oud Holland 100 (1986), pp. 141-42, no. 55. Bramer’s drawing of a painting by 'harceles Segers' features a mountain landscape with a diagonally winding river and a distant view that strongly resembles the painting in The Hague (P 8). Besides painted and etched versions of the same composition, Segers thus also seems to have made painted variants of related inventions.

Printed on the verso of the impression of the River Valley with Four Trees in London (HB 4 I b, inv. no. S.5534) is an impression of the Mountain Valley with Fenced Fields (HB 6 I b). This is a 'maculature' impression: without being re-inked, a plate is covered with a sheet of damp paper and put through the press again. Generally this was done to clean the plate of residues of ink, but in this case it was intended to print an impression. Despite the small amount of ink still remaining on the plate, the lines are so crisp that all of the details are visible. It gives the impression of being a pen drawing in grey ink. Because of an accidental fold in the paper during printing, a section remained blank on the left, which was then filled in with brush and grey ink. The framing line in grey also joins up seamlessly with the impression. It is difficult to determine whether this double-sided sheet was discovered after Segers’s death, when studio material, including plates, might have been circulating, or whether the artist himself produced such experimental prints for art lovers, though the first option seems most probable.

The large mountain landscapes seem to be ideally suited for printing on linen and being worked up with brush and paint and transformed into 'paintings' to hang on the wall - what may well correspond to what Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678) described as 'printed paintings'. If Segers indeed produced such cheap, yet less durable alternatives for paintings on canvas, their chances of survival would have been much smaller than impressions printed on paper.¹²¹²It cannot be ruled out that coloured impressions on paper were also hung on the wall, which would be the reason why so few have been preserved. Only a handful of the hand-coloured large landscape prints after Bruegel and Van Coninxloo have withstood the ravages of time; see S. Dackerman, Painted Prints: The Revelation of Color in Northern Renaissance and Baroque Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts, exh. cat. Baltimore (Museum of Art)/St Louis (Museum of Art) 2002, no. 26; and L.A. Baines, The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, 1450-1700: Nicolaes de Bruyn, 2 pts., Ouderkerk aan den IJssel 2014, I, no. 49. After hanging on the wall for some time, they must have faded and been thrown out. That Segers made 'printed paintings' of his large mountain landscapes is therefore difficult to prove. And yet, given the investment in material and labour, it is difficult to imagine that he would have produced his monumental etchings only to pull a single or a few impressions on paper. The Mountain Valley with Fenced Fields (HB 6) is related to the much smaller etching of The Enclosed Valley (HB 13). This print has survived in twenty-two impressions, ten of which on cloth, probably produced for collectors’ albums. Other similarities with Segers’s painting in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence (P 5, inv. no. 1303) can be pointed out. These include the angular, rocky foreground, the form of the rocky outcroppings (in the print at the left and in the painting at the right), but primarily the view over the plain with fields and buildings and the vast sense of depth and space.

Huigen Leeflang, 2016

Of all of the large mountain landscapes (HB 3-6), the Mountain Valley with Fenced Fields (HB 6) survives in the most impressions, namely six, all of which differ markedly from one another. The motif of the rocks at left and the repoussoir device of a fence screening a path also seem to be derived from a print after Bruegel (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-7364). However, this is the least Bruegelian of the four large mountain landscape prints. The rocky outcropping is here at the side, and a distant view in a flat valley largely occupies the rest of the composition. Despite the low horizon, there is a great sense of depth thanks to a virtually endless succession of pastures and fields enclosed by fences, paths, tiny houses and boscages. These can be distinguished most clearly in the crispest and most complete impression, now in the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden (inv. no. A 49388). Of all of Segers’s known etchings, moreover, this one is coloured in the greatest detail.³⁰³⁰With a width of 515-16 mm, this impression is the most complete, but perhaps the original composition was slightly wider.

The detailed colouring focuses attention on elements in the landscape that might otherwise be missed, for instance, the many houses with red roofs, the area of water at the left showing up as bright blue, and the two tiny figures on the left.³¹³¹The two houses in the foreground are virtually identical to the largest houses in HB 14, as G. Knuttel, Hercules Seghers, Amsterdam 1941, p. 56, already noticed earlier. The colouring makes it clear that they are women engaged in a specific activity: the left one, wearing a red skirt and cap, blue apron and white jacket, holds a bag, while the right one, with a blue skirt and a red jacket, extends her hand and seems to be sowing the ploughed field before the cottage. This kind of activity, done by farmers at first light, accords with the early morning suggested by the colouring of the sky and landscape.

The contrast with the impressions of the second state printed in blue, two in the Rijksmuseum (HB 6 II d, inv. no. RP-P-OB-840 and HB 6 II e, the present work, and one in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (HB 6 II f, inv. no. 103-1880), is great. The areas of shade in drypoint in the foreground and the horizontal bands throughout the landscape deviate from the shadows done in brush in the above-mentioned impression in Dresden, and yet they are remarkably effective in creating depth. An evening mood seems to dominate the impression in Berlin, while in the impression in the Rijksmuseum (HB 6 II d), in which the sky is coloured with pink and blue oil paint, night seems to be falling.³²³²According to J. van der Waals, De prentschat van Michiel Hinloopen. Een reconstructie van de eerste openbare papierkunstverzameling in Nederland, The Hague and Amsterdam 1988, pp. 139, 159 (n. 42), Segers first pulled this impression through the press covered with a piece of coarse fabric to blind stamp the linen’s pattern; see G. Luijten and A. van Suchtelen (eds.), Dawn of the Golden Age: Northern Netherlandish Art, 1580-1620, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1993-94, no. 347. However, only the pattern of the deckle is visible in the fairly thick paper of this impression. The imprint of a textile pattern appears in two of Segers’s prints, possibly because they were used to make a counterproof on linen or cotton (HB 13 II m and HB 13 II r). This impression (HB 6 II e), printed with an abundance of plate tone, with the sky coloured with streaks of blue watercolour, can practically be considered a nocturnal scene. The above-mentioned 'maculature' impression in London (HB 6 I b, inv. no. S.5534) and the one printed in brown, formerly in the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich, and presumed destroyed (HB 6 I c, inv. no. 9412), are more difficult to interpret as specific times of the day or moods.

The question that arises is whether Segers intended for buyers to purchase multiple impressions and to compare them. Print series of the Four Times of Day, the Four Seasons, or the Twelve Months were tremendously popular.³³³³For example, see the series by Jan van de Velde II (1593-1641) of landscapes representing the Elements, Seasons, Months, and Times of the Day; see F.W.H. Hollstein, Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, ca. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1949-2010, XXXII-XXXIII (1989; Jan van de Velde), nos. 18-80. For similar series and pendants in both painting and printmaking, see J. van der Waals, Prenten in de Gouden Eeuw. Van kunst tot kastpaper, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen) 2006, pp. 64-71. The album with prints by Segers in the collection of Michiel Hinloopen opened with two series by Jan van de Velde: the Times of the Day and the Twelve Months; see J. van der Waals, De prentschat van Michiel Hinloopen. Een reconstructie van de eerste openbare papierkunstverzameling in Nederland, The Hague and Amsterdam 1988, p. 158 (n. 5). Only two of the six known impressions of the Mountain Valley with Fenced Fields, however, appear to have the same provenance.³⁴³⁴The museum's other impressions (HB 6 II d) certainly comes from the collection of Pieter Cornelis, Baron van Leyden. This is not certain for the present work, though in J. Verbeek, Hercules Seghers en zijn voorlopers, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1967, under no. 52, Van Leyden is given as a former owner. E. Haverkamp-Begemann, Hercules Segers: The Complete Etchings, with a Supplement on Johannes Ruischer by E. Trautscholdt, Amsterdam and The Hague 1973, gave its provenance as from the Hinloopen collection and noted that the inscription OST: 1654 on the verso was trimmed along the edge. The inscription, however, does not seem to have been cut, and the print probably has the format to which Segers trimmed it. The handwriting does not belong to Hinloopen, but rather to another early owner. Van der Waals did not count the sheet among the Segers’s prints from the Hinloopen collection, from which circa eight Segers prints vanished some time before 1885. Whether Hinloopen owned one or more of the large mountain landscapes therefore remains unknown.

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. 18, 2 March, pp. 69-71 (Die grosse Landschaft mit dem Knüppelgeländer); 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. 18; J. Springer, Die Radierungen des Herkules Seghers, 3 vols., Berlin 1910-12, no. 29b; W. Fraenger, Die Radierungen des Hercules Seghers: Ein physiognomischer Versuch, Erlenbach-Zurich and elsewhere 1922, pp. 64-65, 88; R. Grosse, Die holländische Landschaftskunst, 1600-1650, 2nd edn., Stuttgart 1925, p. 103; G. Knuttel Wzn., Hercules Seghers, Amsterdam [1941], pp. 9, 51; W. van Leusden, Het grafisch-technisch probleem van de etsen van Hercules Seghers, Utrecht 1960, p. 11; K.G. Boon, ‘Introduction‘ in J. Verbeek, Hercules Seghers en zijn voorlopers, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1967, p. 3 (n. 1); E. Haverkamp-Begemann, Hercules Segers: The Complete Etchings, with a Supplement on Johannes Ruischer by E. Trautscholdt, Amsterdam and The Hague 1973, no. 6 II d, pp. 30-31, 39, 45 (incl. nn. 84 and 86), 54-55; 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. 6 II e; J. van der Waals, De prentschat van Michiel Hinloopen. Een reconstructie van de eerste openbare papierkunstverzameling in Nederland, The Hague and Amsterdam 1988, Appendix 7, no. HB 6 II e; 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 6 II e

H. Leeflang, 2016, 'Hercules Segers, Mountain Valley with Fenced Fields [HB 6 II e], Amsterdam, c. 1625 - c. 1630', in J. Turner (ed.), Works by Hercules Segers in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.363358