(Kortrijk 1576/78 – before 1639 Utrecht)
A rocky wooded landscape with a waterfall,
signed and dated lower left: R. SAVERY 16.,
oil on panel, 45 x 56 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Brussels, 16 February 1954, lot 228;
where bought by the family of the present owner

Literature:
K. Müllenmeister, Roelandt Savery, Hofmaler von Kaiser Rudolf II in Prag, Lingen, 1988, p. 209, fig. 42B

K. Müllenmeister dates the painting to around 1610 and points out the typical Bohemian wooded landscape with clusters of rocks.

Roelant Savery came from a Flemish family of painters, training with his elder brother Jacob and Hans Bol, a late Northern mannerist landscape master who had an important role in propagating the further spread of the visual models and themes of Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Fleeing Spanish persecution, Savery’s family settled in Haarlem where he was trained, before the young artist set out on his formative journey to Prague. Becoming court painter to Emperor Rudolf II, Savery studied the flora and fauna of the monarch’s extensive hunting grounds, before being sent on an expedition to the Tyrol by Rudolf to study the plants there. An exceptional painter of birds, which feature in the present composition as in many others, he trained Gillis d’Hondecoeter. In 1616 Savery moved back to the Netherlands, setting up studio in Utrecht where, along with his friends Ambrosius Bosschaert and Balthasar van der Ast, he was a leading painter of floral still-lifes.

The present picture is most probably an imagined view, based on the extensive studies made by Savery during his Tyrolean trip. Within it he has typically set a bird of paradise, in this instance a scarlet feathered parrot. The expressive nature of the landscape, with the serpentine lines of some of the branches shows Savery still rooted the Northern mannerist tradition.