Landscape with a Steep Cliff and a Stream: Small Version [HB 23 II d]

Inscriptions

inscribed on verso: lower centre, in a nineteenth-century hand, in pencil, 9a (?)
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

Second state of two (thin, curling lines have been added in many places in the etching, particularly in the rocks but also in the water and the foreground; some areas of fine shading have also been added in the lower left and lower right corners, which were left blank in state I).

Condition

Two vertical folds in centre and right, ground is cracked on these folds; both sides are dark yellow from the oil-based binding medium in the ground having permeated the paper; verso: remnants of glue in the corners.

Provenance

...; from the dealer J.H. Odink, Amsterdam, fl. 150, to the museum (L. 2228a), 1910

ObjectNumber: RP-P-1910-2012

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

Context

Rocky Mountains: Variants Printed from Two Plates

Within Segers’s printed oeuvre, a group of landscape etchings stands out in which the artist on two different plates created variation with the same or very closely related compositions (HB 15-24).

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. 1589/90.¹This 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.²Amsterdam, 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.³Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, DTB 420, p. 267 (13 August 1616).

Hercules’ father was a merchant in Haarlem and Amsterdam, but chose for his son another profession.⁴In 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.⁵The 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.⁶J. 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 1612.⁷H. 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-?).⁸Amsterdam, 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.⁹Amsterdam, 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 1631.¹⁰Amsterdam, 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).¹¹J. 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.¹²The 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 1640.¹³J. 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’).¹⁴The 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.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. 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.¹⁶See 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.¹⁷Ibid., 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

Belonging to the group of forty-two works by Segers from the Hinloopen collection are two sheets in the Rijksmuseum that are not printed, but rather executed in oil paint (P 18, inv. no. RP-T-H-00-250 and P 19, inv. no. RP-T-H-00-251). They are both closely related to prints and are most likely sketches or preparatory studies. In the small mountain landscape, the rock formations, castle, vegetation and brook that Segers subsequently worked out in two different etchings are explored in thin oil paint on paper (P 18 and HB 23-24).

It was long believed that the two versions of the Landscape with a Steep Cliff and a Stream were printed from the same plate.¹⁸For example, in J. Verbeek, Hercules Seghers en zijn voorlopers, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1967, no. 14, pl. 26. On the other hand, Haverkamp-Begemann (Hercules Segers: The Complete Etchings, with a Supplement on Johannes Ruischer by E. Trautscholdt, Amsterdam and The Hague 1973, p. 79 under no. 24) described the impressions in separate entries and stated: 'It is unlikely that this print is from the same plate as no. 23.' However, the differences in format, scale, depiction and technique rule out this possibility. Segers most likely first made the oil sketch and used it as the basis for the larger and coarser version of the etched Landscape with a Steep Cliff and a Stream (HB 24, e.g. inv. no. RP-P-H-OB-807).¹⁹Haverkamp-Begemann suggested that both the landscape in oil paint and that of the larger etching (HB 24) derive from the small print (HB 23). However, this is unlikely. Why would the artist make an oil sketch of a composition he had already rendered so successfully in print? And why would he make a coarser and much less successful variant (HB 24) after the exceptionally fine, small version of the Landscape with a Steep Cliff and a Stream (HB 23)? The latter print is also not entirely, or only partially, executed in Segers’s lift-ground technique, as Haverkamp-Begemann assumed, but in line etching, as the trials with the etching needle in the sky reveal. The etching has a more extensive foreground and a bit of landscape with trees on the left, which is not found in the oil sketch, and missing as well in the smaller etching (HB 23).

The larger version of the Landscape with a Steep Cliff and a Stream (HB 24) is not Segers’s most successful print. This cannot be blamed on the foul biting that caused a spotty streak in the sky, but primarily on the somewhat coarse way in which the etching turned out, for instance the structures in the rocks. Great is the contrast with the smaller, much subtler version of the Landscape with a Steep Cliff and a Stream (HB 23). Segers made it in his lift-ground technique, drawing the depiction in ink directly on the plate and then etching it.²⁰For a reconstruction of this technique, see 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. 75-89.

Thanks to this simple, yet unique and effective technique, Segers made prints that can hardly be distinguished from pen drawings, and which display comparable variation and refinement in their linearity. In an inventory of 1775, the impression of the first state in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris (HB 23 I b, inv. no. RESERVE CB-49-BOITE ECU(ESTNUM 733)) was compared to a pen drawing. This parallel – which was drawn more often and not infrequently – led to some confusion in descriptions of prints by Segers in old collections.²¹In the inventory of the collection of Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694-1774) that was purchased for Louis XVI (1754-1793) in 1771, the etching is described thus: 'This piece evidences an admirable intelligence, one would think it was done with the pen and ink, which has faded. It has all the spirit of Stefano della Bella and Callot' ('Ce morceau est d’une intelligence admirable on le prendait pour être à la plume dont l’encre auroit pali. Il a tout l’esprit des La Belle et Callot'); citation from E. Haverkamp-Begemann, Hercules Segers: The Complete Etchings, with a Supplement on Johannes Ruischer by E. Trautscholdt, Amsterdam and The Hague 1973, p. 78. The four prints by Segers in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg were first mentioned in an inventory in 1811. Their description as anonymous paintings in oil was corrected, and they were subsequently called: 'Drawing in indigo on red paper' (HB 7 II c); 'Drawing in indigo on a red ground' (HB 9 I a) and 'Landscape drawn on dark paper in Chinese ink' (HB 14 II b). The sheets were later transferred to the print collection of the State Hermitage Museum. I should like to thank Roman Grigoryev for this information. Two etchings by Segers (HB 13 I g and HB 13 III t) are still kept among the drawings in the Louvre, Paris (inv. nos. 22774 and 22775); for both, see http://arts-graphiques.louvre.fr. Segers worked up the print a second time, drawing in the etching ground the scratchy line patterns that gave his rocks their characteristic structure, but which also diminished the print’s subtlety.

Huigen Leeflang, 2016

Literature

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), nos. 6 and 15; J.G.A. Frenzel, Die Kupferstich-Sammlung Friedrich August II, König von Sachsen: Beschrieben und mit einem historischen Überblick der Kupferstecherkunst begeleitet, Leipzig 1854, nos. 6 and 15; J. Springer, Die Radierungen des Herkules Seghers, 3 vols., Berlin 1910-12, no. 9a (Die Landschaft mit dem spitzen Felsen); Jaarverslag Vereeniging Rembrandt 1909, p. [4]; J.P. van der Kellen, ‘Amsterdam, Neuerwerbungen des Kupferstichkabinetts des Rijksmuseums’, Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für vervielfältigende Kunst, 1911, pp. 61-63; L. Burchard, Die holländischen Radierer vor Rembrandt, 2nd edn., Berlin 1917, p. 30; W. Fraenger, Die Radierungen des Hercules Seghers: Ein physiognomischer Versuch, Erlenbach-Zurich and elsewhere 1922, pp. 53, 60, 62, 83; R. Grosse, Die holländische Landschaftskunst, 1600-1650, 2nd edn., Stuttgart 1925, pp. 101-02; G. Knuttel Wzn., Hercules Seghers, Amsterdam [1941], pp. 39-41; L.C. Collins, Hercules Seghers, Chicago 1953, pp. 27, 43, 63; 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. 23 II d and pp. 30 (n. 37), 32-33, 44-45 (incl. nn. 84 and 86), 49 (n. 110), 54; 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. 23 II d; 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 23 II d

Citation

H. Leeflang, 2016, 'Hercules Segers, Landscape with a Steep Cliff and a Stream: Small Version [HB 23 II d], Amsterdam, c. 1622 - c. 1625', in J. Turner (ed.), Works by Hercules Segers in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.37264

(accessed 28 April 2025 13:00:40).