Hercules Segers

One of the most innovative Dutch printmakers and landscapists of the seventeenth century, Hercules Segers studied briefly with the painter Gillis van Coninxloo (1544-1607) in Amsterdam before that artist's death in 1606. He joined the Haarlem guild of St. Luke in about 1612, but returned to Amsterdam two years later. The exact date of Segers's death is not known: he is mentioned as an art dealer in The Hague in 1633, but a document of 1638 describes his wife as a widow. Segers's landscape paintings are rare; he is best known for his powerfully evocative and technically innovative landscape etchings. His works had a profound influence on Rembrandt, Philips Koninck, and a number of other artists, and inspired a close imitator, the etcher Johannes Ruisscher (ca. 1625-after 1675).