Enclosed Valley (c. 1623–30): Art, History and Details

Enclosed Valley (c. 1623–30) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Hercules Seghers (Dutch, 1589/90–c. 1638).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

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 first state of this print.

Object facts

• Title: Enclosed Valley
• Date: c. 1623–30
• Creator attribution: Hercules Seghers (Dutch, 1589/90–c. 1638)
• Culture: Netherlands
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching on cloth, hand colored with watercolor
• Dimensions: Platemark: 10.7 x 19 cm (4 3/16 x 7 1/2 in.)
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1951.349

A detail from the museum

Though largely unknown today, Hercules Segers was one of Rembrandt's favorite artists: he owned eight paintings and one printing plate by Seghers.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Dackerman, Susan. Painted Prints: The Revelation of Color in Northern Renaissance & Baroque Engravings, Etchings & Woodcuts. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002.
• Francis, Henry S. “‘Der Talkessel’ of Hercules Seghers.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 39, no. 1 (January 1952): 14–17.
• Lurie, Ann Tzeutschler. “Gillis van Coninxloo: A Landscape with Venus and Adonis.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 50, no. 9 (November 1963): 252–258.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.