Hercules Pieterszoon Seghers

Place: Haarlem

Biography:

Hercules Pieterszoon Seghers or Segers (c. 1589 – c. 1638) was a Dutch painter and printmaker of the Dutch Golden Age. He has been called 'the most inspired, experimental and original landscapist' of his period and an even more innovative printmaker. Hercules was born in Haarlem, as the son of Cathalina Hercules and Pieter Seghers; a Mennonite cloth merchant, originally from Flanders, who moved to Amsterdam in 1596. There Hercules was apprenticed to the leading Flemish painter and printmaker Gillis van Coninxloo. He is mainly known for his highly innovative etchings, mostly of landscapes, which were often printed on coloured paper or cloth, and sometimes hand-painted after printing. Hercules Seghers was probably best known to his contemporaries for his paintings of landscapes and still-life subjects such as The Flood (1631, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).