Hercules Segers and Rembrandt, the Eccentric and the Traditionalist

Wednesday, April 26, 2017
6:00 PM in the Lecture Hall
The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
1 East 78th Street

Please note that seating in the Lecture Hall is on a first-come, first-served basis with RSVP. There will be a simulcast in an adjacent room to accommodate overflow. Latecomers are not guaranteed a seat.

Hercules Segers and Rembrandt van Rijn were arguably the two most experimental printmakers of the early modern period. Active in The United Provinces, the center of the European print trade during the first half of the seventeenth century, both artists brought a painterly freedom to the medium, taking their work far beyond the approaches that had prevailed from the fifteenth century on. Their unbridled experimentation pushed traditional techniques to ever more expressive ends. Scholars have long been fascinated by the idea that Segers’s work must have inspired the great technical experimentation that Rembrandt brought to printmaking during the late part of his career, yet there is reason to question how much Rembrandt might have actually learned from Segers. This lecture will examine the relationship between these two kindred spirits, Segers the eccentric painter/printmaker and Rembrandt the traditionalist steeped in the history of the medium.

The Walter W.S. Cook Alumni Lecture Series was inaugurated in 1959 on the occasion of the dedication of the James B. Duke mansion, the current home of the Institute of Fine Arts. The series, which invites prominent alumni to speak in honor of Dr. Cook, is organized by the Institute's Alumni Association.