Hercules Segers

Sunday 8 January the members of AG DUTCH & FLEMISH were invited for an expert meeting regarding the Hercules Segers exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

On the last day of the exhibition, curator Huigen Leeflang warmly welcomed us together with the couriers of the lending museums. He talked us through the exhibition and research project on this pioneering etcher of the Dutch Golden Age. Subsequently, the exhibition was visited individually. Afterwards, we got together to discuss various aspects of the life and work of Hercules Segers in the exhibition rooms.

This extraordinary exhibition was the first full retrospective of the work of Hercules Segers. In total, eighteen paintings and a hundred and ten impressions of fifty-four prints were on show. With more than seventy impressions, the Rijksmuseum holds the largest Segers collection in the world. The research for the exhibition has resulted not only in new discoveries and attributions, but also in a much better insight into Segers’s working methods, use of materials and the dating of the works. He made etchings in his painter’s studio and with painter’s materials, and printed with oil paints on colourful backgrounds and on linen and cotton. By working up his etchings with paint he made every print a unique work of art.

We would like to congratulate Huigen and his colleagues on the wonderful exhibition and thank him for the inspiring meeting. The exhibition now moves to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.