Biography
Roelandt Savery was born in the Flemish city of Kortrijk (Courtrai). During the religious upheavals of the 1580s his family made their way to the northern Netherlands, finally settling in Haarlem, where his older brother Jacques (Jacob, c. 1565–1603) entered the painters’ guild in 1587. Roelandt studied with Jacques and accompanied him to Amsterdam where Jacques became a citizen in 1591. Roelandt’s early landscapes indicate that he also had contact with
Roelandt was sent by Rudolph in 1606–1607 to the Tyrolean Alps to record the “marvels of nature.” By 1613 or 1614 Savery had returned to Amsterdam. He was to move one more time, however, for in 1619 he settled in Utrecht and joined its painters’ guild. The twenty years spent in Utrecht until his death proved to be very successful for the artist. In 1626, for example, the city of Utrecht paid him 700 guilders for a painting of “all the animals of the air and earth,” to be presented to the wife of the Prince of Orange, Amalia van Solms. Among Savery’s pupils were
Savery’s dramatic rocky landscapes often served as the setting for religious, mythological, or allegorical scenes populated by animals and figures carefully drawn from nature. Savery also painted flower still lifes strongly influenced by the work of
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
April 24, 2014