Seghers or Segers, Hercules Pietersz [key], c.1589–c.1638, Dutch landscape painter and etcher, b. Haarlem. Seghers's work greatly influenced early 17th-century Dutch landscape painting. He studied with the painter Gillis van Coninxloo and may have traveled to Italy and in the Alps. Some of the frenzy of his personal life can be seen in his rare paintings and his more numerous, technically advanced and innovative, mysterious and visionary etchings, which often employed colored papers and imaginative hand tinting. His landscapes consist of vast, often desolate panoramas and powerful smaller scenes rendered with drama and pathos. Rembrandt owned at least eight paintings by him, and his own landscape style was influenced by Seghers. The best collection of his work is at the Rijksmuseum.
See study by L. C. Collins (1953).
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