Hercules Seghers

Hercules Seghers (born c. 1590, Haarlem?, Netherlands—died c. 1638, The Hague?) was a Dutch painter and etcher of stark, fantastic landscapes.

Seghers studied with Gillis van Coninxloo in Amsterdam and was influenced by the work of Adam Elsheimer. Seghers’s style contrasts strongly with the main aspects of the Dutch output of that period; most of his works would have been difficult to understand prior to their rediscovery in the 20th century. Early reports indicate that he was lonely and poor, though several contemporary artists, including Rembrandt, expressed admiration for his work. He owned several of Seghers’s prints and paintings and was obviously influenced by his landscapes.

The majority of Seghers’s works represent forbidding mountain scenes with jagged cliffs, desolate valleys, broken tree trunks, and scant traces of human habitation. His etchings belong to the most original and impressive experiments in the history of printmaking. He used different-coloured inks and often printed on coloured or dyed paper and even on canvas; the diversity of individual prints was increased by his adding accents by hand.

Seghers’s paintings are rare; few are documented, and many forgeries exist. Art historians generally attributed 10 to 12 paintings to Seghers’s canon. When preparing for a retrospective of his work in 2016, however, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam authenticated six additional paintings from private collections, potentially expanding Seghers’s oeuvre to comprise 18 paintings. The new paintings were on view for the exhibit at the Rijksmuseum and later at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in 2017.

Just as the details about Seghers’s life and work are uncertain, so too are the details about his premature death. Dates and locations vary among sources, with some contending that he died in the early 1630s or in Amsterdam.