British Museum blog

2 May 2012 • 7:33 am 1

‘Eerie’ innovation from the seventeenth century


An Van Camp, curator, British Museum

If you visit Room 90 on the fourth floor here at the British Museum, you will find a display of some of the stranger prints in our collection. Hercules Segers and his printed paintings, is on show just outside the study room of the Prints and Drawings department and is a rare outing of the unusual and weird-looking etchings created by this visionary printmaker. Honestly, they attract the amazement of everyone who lays eyes on them.

Distant view with a mossy tree branch

Distant view with a mossy tree branch

Hercules Segers lived and worked at the beginning of the seventeenth century. He created prints that looked completely different from anything that came before. While other printmakers tried to make identical impressions of their engraved works in order to distribute them to a large market, Segers wanted to create unique works of art.

Every single one of his prints looks entirely different from any other one and the eeriness and desolation they emit makes them stand out from other artists’ work from the same period. This is because, after the printing process, Seger’s hand-coloured most of his works in a wide range of colours, from aubergine purple to olive green (see Distant view with a mossy tree branch: S.5528), while the etched lines are often printed in blues, greens or even bright turquoise (see River valley with a waterfall: S.5519). While most prints of the time were made by applying black to white background, he went against the grain and printed one of his etchings in white on a black background (see Ruins of the Abbey of Rijnsburg: 1854,0628.73).

Segers also invented a completely new printmaking technique called sugar-lift etching, creating darker areas within the landscapes which look grainy upon closer inspection and evoke a sense of the supernatural (see Rocky mountains with a plateau: S.5521).

It is no surprise that when I became curator of Dutch and Flemish drawings and prints in 2010 I was itching to share my passion for this eccentric artist with the Museum’s visitors who I am sure will grow to love his colourful works.

Hercules Segers and his printed paintings is in Room 90 until 16 May, and An Van Camp will be giving a gallery talk on 3 May.
Read more about Segers’ printmaking techniques.

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