Roelandt Savery
Flemish, 1576 - 1639
Painter, draughtsman and etcher, brother of (1) Jacob Savery I. The subject and miniaturist precision of his earliest dated work, Birds by a Pond (1600; St Petersburg, Hermitage), reflect the influence of Jacob, his presumed teacher. The strong Flemish current in Amsterdam c. 1600 is apparent in the Village Edge (Pommersfelden, Schloss Wissenstein), with its mixture of decorative and realistic—the gracefully swaying trees reminiscent of Hans Bol and the robust peasant figures based on Jacob’s studies from life. Also from the same year are two identical Flowers in a Niche (Utrecht, Cent. Mus., and New York, priv. col., see Müllenmeister, 1988, no. 270). As earlier flower-pieces known from contemporary sources are lost, these are the earliest dated, independent flower paintings in the Netherlands.
Roelandt may have been invited to the court of Rudolf II as a promising artistic descendant of Pieter Bruegel I, many of whose best paintings Rudolf owned. This would explain why Roelandt abandoned his borrowing of Jacob’s figure drawings and developed his own repertory of peasant studies, made largely in the Prague markets. He inscribed them with colour notations and usually the phrase naer het leven (‘after the life’), confirming the source of the unfamiliar costumes. Indeed, the drawings were thought to be by Bruegel until 1970, when Roelandt’s authorship was demonstrated (Spicer, 1970a, and van Leeuwen). The related paintings of peasant life range from 1604 to 1611 (e.g. Peasants Carousing, 1608; Brussels, Mus. A. Anc.). Roelandt’s studies also encompassed more exotic subjects: Hungarian cavalrymen (e.g. London, BM) and unprecedented studies of Jews (e.g. Frankfurt am Main, Städel. Kstinst.).
Artistic life at Rudolf’s court was marked by the personal quality of his patronage and by the mutual influence of a small but diverse circle of protégés, including such painters as Bartholomeus Spranger and Hans von Aachen, the silversmith Paulus van Vianen, the sculptor Adriaen de Vries and several important composers and scientists. This stimulating environment was further enriched by access to the greatest Kunst- und Wunderkammer of the day. Rudolf’s interest in the Kunst- und Wunderkammer doubtless accounts for his sending Roelandt into the Tyrol c. 1606–7 to draw ‘wonders’. The resultant drawings, depicting awesome mountain peaks and, especially, waterfalls, are among the earliest interpretations of these thrilling natural phenomena. Like his woodland compositions and drawings of Prague and its environs, these alpine views, done from nature but enhanced in the studio, served as reference material for later paintings, such as the Cascade (c. 1608; Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.). Composed views on a more intimate scale were drawn for prints published by Aegidius Sadeler, many of which were engraved by his assistant Isaac Major, who also made etchings after Roelandt’s drawings. Roelandt’s only autograph etching, Gnarled Tree (Hollstein: Dut. & Flem., no. 2), dates from c. 1608–9. Other etchings have been attributed to him. While his delicately washed pen drawings owe much to Jacob and to van Vianen, his expressive use of black and coloured chalks for dramatic landscapes and studies is his own.
Rudolf’s menageries and hunting-grounds provided the background for Roelandt’s scenes of the hunt, such as the Boar Hunt (1609; Munich, Alte Pin.) and for encyclopedic depictions of the animal kingdom. Thus, his careful observations of individual animals (e.g. chalk studies of lions in Dresden, Kupferstichkab.) could later be used in such animal paintings as Orpheus Charming the Animals (1610; Frankfurt am Main, Städel. Kstinst. & Städt. Gal.).
Roelandt’s flower paintings, like those of his contemporaries, are open to Christian interpretation as vanitas images. That he intended them as such is suggested by the common associations attached to the specific, and sometimes unusual, species (Segal), the inclusion of fading flowers and the impossible floral combinations. A good example is the Flowers on a Ledge (1612; Vaduz, Samml. Liechtenstein). No flower drawings have been attributed to Roelandt. In some cases he may have painted blossoms directly from life, in others indirectly: the flowers and insects in Flowers in a Niche (1611; England, priv. col., see Müllenmeister, 1988, no. 272) are borrowed from watercolour and gouache drawings in Joris Hoefnagel’s emblematic natural history compendium, the Four Elements (ex-Rosenwald priv. col.; Washington, DC, N.G.A.), which Rudolf II possessed. This is the only flower painting for which an emblematic ‘key’ is known to have been available.
Roelandt returned to Amsterdam in 1613, remaining there until 1619, when he moved to Utrecht with his nephew Hans Savery II (1589–1654). The landscapes Roelandt produced in Amsterdam typically offer to the lowlander the vicarious thrill of the mountain wilderness by combining plunging views and breathtaking waterfalls into a composite view, as, for example, in the Wilderness with the Temptation of St Anthony (1617; Brian and Esther Pilkington priv. col., on loan to London, N.G.). His characteristic brilliant detail of woodland flowers and water spray is set against the broad colouristic sweep of the rocks. Only a few drawings, of ruins or imaginary mountain landscapes (and a few animal studies), were done in Amsterdam and possibly none in Utrecht. Of his Dutch surroundings he depicted only cattle, whose worthiness as subject-matter he seems to have been the first to celebrate in paint (e.g. Bulls Fighting, 1616; Geneva, Mus. A. & Hist.). Perhaps in response to popular demand for accessible exotica, he began producing animal and bird fantasies with nominal biblical or mythological themes, such as Exotic Birds with the Abduction of Ganymede (c. 1618; Vienna, Akad. Bild. Kst.). The artist’s last paintings of peasants, such as the sympathetic ‘portrait’ of a Peasant Resting (Karlsruhe, Staatl. Ksthalle), date from c. 1617.
Roelandt Savery never married, and died in poverty and mental confusion, hardly working in his last years. Inconsistencies and harshness in paintings from the later 1620s onwards suggest that parts were done by Hans II or another assistant. Even before the master’s death Hans II and other imitators began producing a few hundred such pastiches. However, Roelandt continued to paint flower-pieces until near the end of his life, culminating in the extravagance of the Bouquet in a Niche (1624; Utrecht, Cent. Mus.), a disquieting picture, 1.3 m high, in which the brevity, even nastiness, of life is reflected in the cockatoo killing a frog beneath cascading blossoms.
Many Dutch artists active in the first half of the 17th century felt Roelandt’s influence, but only his nephew Hans Savery II can have been a pupil. In Utrecht, Roelandt’s flower-pieces provided models for Jacob Marrel, while his landscapes and animal paintings were the inspiration for Gillis d’Hondecoeter. Allaert van Everdingen’s scenes of Scandinavian wilderness recall Roelandt’s alpine drawings, some of which he reworked. Antoni Waterlo, the Willaerts family and Herman Saftleven II copied and adapted his drawings. Beyond Utrecht, Jacob van Ruisdael took his gnarled trees as a point of departure, while Rembrandt owned an album of Tyrolean views, many of which were later bought and copied by Lambert Doomer.
Joaneath A. Spicer. "Savery." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T076182pg2 (accessed March 7, 2012).
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