Daniel Seghers

1590 – Antwerp - 1661

Daniel Seghers was born in Antwerp in 1590. Along with his contemporary Jan “Velvet” Breughel, he is surely one of the most remarkable personalities among the Antwerp floral painters of the seventeenth century.

After his father’s death, his mother, who adopted the Protestant faith, took the adolescent Seghers to Holland, where he began his training as a painter in 1605. Upon returning to Antwerp in 1610, he joined the workshop of Jan “Velvet” Breughel who sponsored him as an apprentice in the corporation of Saint Luke in 1611. Seghers became a master that same year. In addition to the professional training of his disciple, Breughel also took it upon himself to convert him to Catholicism, and not unsuccessfully, as Seghers joined the Jesuit novitiate in Mechelen in 1614 as a lay brother. (He never attained the priesthood, although he is often erroneously referred to as “Father Seghers”. He took his first vows in 1616 and remained in the monastery until 1617. From 1618 to 1621, he lived at the Jesuit house in Antwerp, before being assigned to the college in Brussels where he took his definitive vows on 27 July, 1625. After a stint in Rome, Seghers returned to Antwerp in 1627, where he would stay until his death in 1661 working as an active painter from within his residence at the monastery.

He quickly gained a reputation – as much for his exceptional talents as for his unusual personal circumstances - which extended far beyond his native city. Driven by curiosity, numerous illustrious visitors found their way to his painting studio in the monastery, and the commissions poured in from the various courts of Europe. He became a celebrity and was personally invited to visit the governors of the Spanish Netherlands, Ferdinand of Austria (in 1635) and later Leopold-Willem (in 1638). On the occasions of these visits, he brought his famous Garlands as gifts either in his own name or on behalf of his Order. Those that he personally sent to Frederick-Henry of Nassau, to his widow or to the Margrave of Brandenburg are still known as such today.

He was also highly respected by other artists and men of letters: Vondel, C. Huygens, secretary to the Prince of Orange Lucas van Uden and above all, Rubens, who apparently collaborated with him on a work which has since been lost but was at one time in the collection of the Antwerp Jesuits. Seghers specialised virtually exclusively in floral paintings and brought this formula inherited from the “Velvet” Breughel to a sublime perfection: garlands of flowers arranged in a wreath against a black ground, framing either religious elements or medallions in grisaille painted by collaborators. This efficient division of labour is one of the essential aspects of his work, a system that had already been established by the “Velvet” Breughel and would be upheld for many years. His chief associates included Erasmus Quellinus, Cornelis Schut, Abraham Diepenbeck, Simon de Vos, Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaerts, Jan van der Hecke, Gonzales Coques and Domenichino.

Always tempered in their baroque opulence, Seghers' floral compositions have seldom been equalled in their acute observation, delicate brushwork, purity of forms and the shimmering palette dominated by subtle variations of purples, carmine reds and whites. As a key figure to understanding the further development of the genre, Seghers' in fact had only one direct student, Jan Philips van Thielen, but he had countless imitators and followers (Ykens, Nicolas van Verendael, Van Son, Jan van der Hecke, Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Baren Gillemans, etc.). An apparent side activity as a landscape painter is indicated by a hypothetical collaboration with A. Sallaert on the Landscapes with figures (in the Ghent museums), however this aspect of his work currently remains more difficult to assess.