The Segal Project

Still lifes in RKDimages
Towards the end of 2008 the RKD launched the Segal Project about still-life painting and drawing. Many thousands of works are being added to the RKDimages database by project assistant Sander Erkens, who has been working in close collaboration with Dr Sam Segal, a biologist and expert on still lifes. Over the last 35 years, Segal has accumulated a vast amount of documentation on still lifes which he will eventually give to the RKD. The archive documents and illustrates roughly 90,000 works of art, of which c. 30,000 have been researched, categorised and described by Sam Segal.

Still life with flowers by Jan van Huijsem

The RKD is delighted with this extraordinary gift, which will provide an excellent resource additional to the documentation of still lifes already present in the RKD.
A selection of the 30,000 descriptions and photographs of still lifes is being entered into RKDimages. Much of this information is new to the art-historical literature. The main emphasis of the entries is on the attribution and provenance of the paintings; in addition the flowers, plants and animals pictured are indexed (with their Latin names) so that information can be retrieved using keywords. Dr Segal continues as guest curator at the RKD until September 2011 when the project will come to an end.

The Segal Project has been made possible by financial support from the British entrepreneur Brian Capstick, founder of the London company Datix, which specialises in software for healthcare organisations.

Artists included in the Segal Project
This list is of artists for whom complete documentation has so far been added by the Segal Project:

You can view the results of the Segal-project online.

Also see: R. van Leeuwen, Sam Segal, biokunsthistoricus: zijn schenking aan het RKD en het Segal Project, RKD Bulletin (2010) nr. 1, pp. 20-35.

Information
Rieke van Leeuwen
Curator of art-historical databases
E: info@rkd.nl
T: 070 3339782