8 quotes found
"The method of printing with three wooden blocks produces painterly prints. But Hercules Segers first applied a layer of paint to his papers or fabrics for his smooth compositions of skies, horizons and foregrounds, and then printed on to them, in a very effective and painterly manner."
"It is a common failing among practitioners of art to become accustomed to a way of coloring, as if things were bound to their manner, and not their manner bound to the nature of things. Many, however, because of a certain natural inclination, adopted manners of coloring that seemed ideally suited to that branch of art to which they were most inclined. And so Hercules Segers concerned himself with savage mountains: and one [another artist:] Liefrinck painted imaginative rocks. Gemstones are also wonderfully colored, and the attractions of shells and other treasures from the sea have their particular admirers."
"And it is understandable, if it were possible to print finished paintings, as Hercules Segers has done with landscapes in our time, that it would no longer be easy to find anyone who would want to devote much labor and time to producing his works."
"Another fitting example here is that of Hercules Segers, disregarded and yet a great artist... ...His observation was unwavering and effective, particularly in his design of landscapes and compositions, with imaginary mountains and caves. It was as if he were pregnant with whole provinces, giving birth to them with immeasurable spaces, and picturing them to a marvel in his paintings and prints."
"..although he even painted and printed on his shirts and the sheets from his bed (for he also printed paintings), he and his whole family remained in abject poverty, so that his dejected wife eventually complained that there was not a piece of linen left that had not been used for paintings or prints."
"Unfortunately, we have no clues about Segers's reputation as an etcher during his lifetime, and it seems very probable that those of his prints which have survived were originally gathered in a few large, privately owned and therefore inaccessible groups. This inaccessibility partly explains their minimal influence on later artists."
"[ Rembrandt ] admired Seger's reworking of the [etch-]plate to create different states. This adventurous approach to printmaking [new developed by Segers] was taken up enthusiastically by Rembrandt, and gives a new significance undreamt of by Segers."
"Before Segers began touching up his prints with the brush, he had used hand-tinted papers on which to print his etchings.. .By varying the tints he was able to clarify the relation of successive planes to each other. But spatial clarity was not enough. What mattered more to Segers was bringing out the structure of the landscape.. ..he goes especially far in specifying, with the brush [in the etching] the particularities of the terrain."