Enclosed Valley
1626
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1626
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Enclosed Valley is a 1626 by Hercules Segers, a Baroque work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This print looks like a quiet Dutch valley at dusk. Hills rise on each side, a river cuts through the center. The whole scene glows under a pale, cloudy sky. Seghers didn’t just etch this. He printed it on cloth, then painted over it in layers. No two versions are the same. The colors feel dreamy, almost unreal. The Cleveland Museum of Art has this version on view.
To make his dreamy and mysterious landscapes, Hercules Seghers combined a number of etching and coloring techniques in order to make prints that met his expressive ends, and which he considered printed paintings. He created 54 etchings, but instead of producing standardized editions printed in black ink on white paper, he made each impression a unique and individualized work of art. He often printed in colored inks on paper prepared with a colored ground, or on cloth (as here), and then painted the printed impression by hand. Cleveland’s etching is one of only ten known impressions of the…
Though largely unknown today, Hercules Segers was one of Rembrandt's favorite artists: he owned eight paintings and one printing plate by Seghers.
Read the full account in the museum source.
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…
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