Daniel Seghers, Cornelis Schut

The actual painting is slightly warmer and less red in tone than the catalogue illustration suggests. The single panel is bevelled on the upper, lower and right sides, and very lightly bevelled on the left side. The panel is slightly bowed. There is a tendency towards flaking and a few flecks of paint loss are visible in the upper centre, and along the lower and right edges. The paint losses have been temporarily secured to prevent further flaking. Apart from the minor flaking, the paint surface seems to be in very good condition. Particularly the brushwork in the flowers has been wonderfully preserved. Some small retouchings are visible to the naked eye in the costume of the Virgin and in the background in the cartouche. The paint surface is covered with an unevenly applied, slightly dirty layer of varnish. The fine craquelure pattern is slightly more coarse within the cartouche. Inspection under ultra violet light is partially obscured by the varnish layer, but there's probably some minor strengthening in the stems and foliage in the lower centre. Offered in an ornately carved gilt wood frame with a few chips, in fair condition. (MW)
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Daniel Seghers was born in Antwerp in 1590. After his father's death, he and his mother moved to Utrecht where his artistic training began. In 1609 or 1610 he returned to Antwerp, where he fulfilled his apprenticeship under Jan Brueghel the Elder, before he was accepted as a master of the guild of St. Luke in 1611. Brueghel the Elder is thought to have converted Seghers, who was brought up in the Protestant faith, to Roman Catholicism. In 1614 Seghers was admitted to the Jesuit Order as a novice, taking his final vows as a lay brother in 1625. After a two-year period at the Order in Rome from 1625 to 1627, he returned to Antwerp where he spent the rest of his life painting.

Seghers' distinctive flower pieces were already widely admired and collected during his lifetime. His work was much in demand, and he received commissions from several European courts; he sent paintings to Frederik Hendrik Prince of Orange-Nassau, and he is known to have been visited in his studio by Charles I and Charles II of England. Seghers primarily painted flower pieces, wreaths, festoons and floral cartouches for the Order, which made their way to churches, or which were offered to dignitaries. There are plentiful documentary records of his works, not least because of a surviving list of 239 works, drawn up by the artist himself.¹

Seghers' inventory fails to establish the identity of the present painting because most of the descriptions are brief, couched in general terms and without any specific details. However, this unrecorded signed painting is a fine example of Seghers' mastery in rendering the essence of each individual flower. His highly individual style, which was characterized by precise observation of nature, and his use of colour, with its many nuances and effects of light, is clearly discernible. In this painting, a number of roses are shown, ranging from bud to bloom. The well-rounded roses are delicately rendered, and instead of strong contours, have been given almost transparent edges that with their subtle texture contrast to the smaller fresh snowdrops.

The composition, as in many of his works, is relatively simple. Two near-symmetrical clusters of flowers, linked together by ivy, adorn a stone cartouche with a religious scene along the lower edge. For the figural scenes in the centre of his cartouches, Seghers often collaborated with artists including Simon de Vos, Erasmus Quellinus, Abraham Diepenbeeck, and in particular Cornelis Schut, of which the present painting is a wonderful example. The scene is painted in a carved stone cartouche, shell-shaped at the top. It shows the Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist as a young boy. It is for these kinds of cartouches, framed with flower garlands, that Seghers is best known, and most recognizable today.  

1. See W. Couvreur, 'Daniel Seghers' inventaris van door hem geschilderde bloemstukken', Gentse Bijdragen tot de Kunstgeschiedenis..., vol. XX, 1967, pp. 87-158.