Ruins of the Abbey of Rijnsburg from the South: Small Version [HB 47 I a]

Inscriptions

inscribed: upper left, in an eighteenth-century hand, in black ink, abdije te Rijnsburg
stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (L. 240)

Technical notes

First state of two (line etching).

Condition

Losses at upper left corner and lower right; ground cracked in five places along bottom edge; small puncture hole at upper centre with a loss of ground; the verso is brown from the oil-based binding medium in the ground having permeated the linen.

Provenance

...; collection Pieter Cornelis, Baron van Leyden (1717-1788), Leiden;¹According to L. 240. his daughter, Françoise Johanna Gael-van Leyden (1745-1813), Leiden;²According 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

ObjectNumber: RP-P-OB-860

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

Context

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.³See '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.⁴At 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 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. 1589/90.⁵This 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.⁶Amsterdam, 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.⁷Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, DTB 420, p. 267 (13 August 1616).

Hercules’ father was a merchant in Haarlem and Amsterdam, but chose for his son another profession.⁸In 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.⁹The 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.¹⁰J. 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 1612.¹¹H. 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-?).¹²Amsterdam, 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.¹³Amsterdam, 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 1631.¹⁴Amsterdam, 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).¹⁵J. 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.¹⁶The 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 1640.¹⁷J. 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’).¹⁸The 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.¹⁹J. 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.²⁰See 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.²¹Ibid., 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

A relatively large number of impressions has come down to us of Segers’s other early depiction of a medieval building, the ruins of the Abbey of Rijnsburg. Of the small etching (HB 47), eight impressions are known, including one in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford that had not yet been described before 2016 (HB 47 II h, inv. no. WA1863.6643). 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).²²For 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.²³J. 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).²⁴Ibid., (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. Four impressions have been preserved of the earliest state of the etched plate, without additions in drypoint. They are printed on linen primed with a grey ground and in two instances coloured with a thin layer of transparent paint (the present work, and HB 47 I d, Washington (DC), National Gallery of Art, inv. no. 1944.5.132). Four other impressions show the plate in its second state, in which the foreground and the walls of the ruin are provided with tone through fine hatching in drypoint (HB 47 II e-h). Segers seems to have only later discovered the possibilities of drypoint and applied them in his plates. In The Enclosed Valley (HB 13, inv. no. RP-P-H-OB-812), for instance, the additions in drypoint look like a logical second step to perfect a delicate etching. In the small Ruins of the Abbey of Rijnsburg, the shadows in drypoint instead resemble an addition made afterwards. The four impressions of the second state are printed on paper, three in blue on a pink ground and coloured with a transparent blue paint. The tone of this paint is comparable to the blue with which the etching is printed, and was applied with rapid, irregular brushstrokes. In all three prints, this is doubtless the beginning of an alteration that was intended to be followed by finishing touches in different colours.

There are indications that Segers worked in sessions. No drypoint is found in his other early etchings, except for the unique Farm Building Surrounded by Trees and a Fence in the Kupferstich-Kabinett in Dresden (HB 36, inv. no. A.49377).²⁵HB 28, HB 34-35, HB 40, HB 43 and HB 52-53. Not coincidentally, it is printed in the same blue on a similarly pink-prepared ground as the three impressions of the Ruins of the Abbey of Rijnsburg. A period of time could have elapsed between the moment when the plates were etched and when they were worked up with drypoint. To make impressions from one or more plates, Segers must have prepared a certain amount of coloured grounds and priming, ink, and paint. Both the Ruins of the Abbey of Rijnsburg and the Farm Building Surrounded by Trees and a Fence were probably worked up with drypoint around the same time and then printed in an identical combination of blue ink and a pink ground. Segers evidently never finished colouring these prints, which accounts for their curiously nonchalant appearance.

Huigen Leeflang, 2016

Literature

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. 11; 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. 11; J. Springer, Die Radierungen des Herkules Seghers, 3 vols., Berlin 1910-12, no. 53a (Die kleine Kirchenruine); W. Fraenger, Die Radierungen des Hercules Seghers: Ein physiognomischer Versuch, Erlenbach-Zurich and elsewhere 1922, pp. 30-34, 40-67, 83; R. Grosse, Die holländische Landschaftskunst, 1600-1650, 2nd edn., Stuttgart 1925, pp. 99, 100; E. Trautscholdt, ‘Seghers (Segers, Seegers, Zegers), Hercules (Herkules, Harcules) Pietersz.‘, in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXX (1936), p. 447; G. Knuttel Wzn., Hercules Seghers, Amsterdam [1941], pp. 13-14, 16, and 18; L.C. Collins, Hercules Seghers, Chicago 1953, pp. 40-42, 77; J.Q. van Regteren Altena, ‘Hercules Seghers en de topografie‘, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 3 (1955), p. [1]; W. van Leusden, Het grafisch-technisch probleem van de etsen van Hercules Seghers, Utrecht 1960, p. 11; E. Haverkamp-Begemann, Hercules Segers: The Complete Etchings, with a Supplement on Johannes Ruischer by E. Trautscholdt, Amsterdam and The Hague 1973, no. 47 I a; J. Rowlands, Hercules Segers, Amsterdam 1979, no. 39; 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. 10; 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. 47 I a; 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 47 I a

Citation

H. Leeflang, 2016, 'Hercules Segers, Ruins of the Abbey of Rijnsburg from the South: Small Version [HB 47 I a], 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.37298

(accessed 28 July 2025 10:30:39).