In recent international art world news, it has been recently reported that the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has recently attributed a questioned work, "River Landscape With Figures" (1625-30), among other works, to the highly respected Dutch 17th-century artist, Hercules Segers. The landscape painting had been attributed for many years to Segers, but it had been discredited in the 1970s by a leading Segers scholar who was uncertain of the authenticity of the work.
New research has led the Dutch national museum to conclude that the work should be attributed to Segers. Over the past two years, the Rijksmuseum has conducted and examined technical studies on about 100 known and questioned Segers works from around the world.
Henry Pettifer, who is Head of the Old Master Paintings Department at Christie's in London, has said that the authentication "could add value" to the work, but it is difficult to predict the amount as Seger's works "so rarely appear at auction, and because there's so much controversy about attribution."
Segers is regarded as one of the Dutch Golden Age's "most experimental and mysterious artists, who was admired by and influenced Rembrandt, among others."
The museum will be presenting the Segers work among a number of paintings, impressions and prints in a large-scale retrospective entitled "Hercules Segers" running from October 7, 2016 to January 8, 2017. The exhibition will then move to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York where it will open on February 13, 2017 as "The Mysterious Landscapes of Hercules Segers."
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