Roelant Savery - Landscape with a Tower and Bridge with Waterbirds in the Foreground - image-1

Lot 1533 Dα

Roelant Savery - Landscape with a Tower and Bridge with Waterbirds in the Foreground

Auction 1118 - overview Cologne
17.11.2018, 11:00 - Old Master Paintings and Drawings / Sculpture
Estimate: 180.000 € - 200.000 €
Result: 322.400 € (incl. premium)

Roelant Savery

Landscape with a Tower and Bridge with Waterbirds in the Foreground

Oil on canvas (relined). 68.5 x 99.5 cm.
Signed and dated lower right: Roelant Savery 1625.

This large painting by the Dutch artist Roelant Savery depicts an impressive abundance of the most diverse birds in a paradisiacal landscape with many different plants and trees. The stage-like focus is on the exotic birds such as the cassowary, native to New Guinea, the ostrich and parrots, as well as the native birds of all species such as storks, swans, ducks and chickens. Mighty tree-lined rocky slopes frame the view in the mid- and background, where the lush bird life is enriched by a representation of two white horses characteristic for Savery. A round tower bathed in bright light and surrounded by water bridged by a stone arch forms the focal point of the scene.
The voyages of Dutch ships to East India and South America made many exotic birds known in Europe during Savery's time. But the artist also had another source for his well-founded depictions of exotic animals: For about a decade starting in around 1603, Savery resided at the court of Rudolf II in Prague where he was able to study and sketch unusual and rare specimens in the emperor's famous menagery, and later integrate them into his paintings. In the Habsburg monarch's equally legendary chamber of art and curiosities, Savery could even admire a stuffed dodo, a flightless bird about one meter tall, which occurred exclusively in Mauritius and died out at the end of the 17th century. Savery integrated this bird into some of his works, for example in the much smaller "Landscape with Birds" of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (inv. no. GG 1082).
Roelant Savery was born in Kortrijk and came from a family that brought forth many well-known artists. The family fled to Haarlem to escape the Spanish invasion, where Roelant apprenticed under his older brother Jacob. Both brothers moved to Amsterdam in 1591, where Roelant established himself as a landscape, animal, and still life painter until his departure for Prague. After his return from Prague, Savery went again to Amsterdam before moving to Utrecht in 1618. The present work, dated 1625, was also made there. The artist died in 1639.
Kurt J. Müllenmeister included this painting in his catalogue raisonné, published in 1988, after examining photographs of it. On the occasion of the preview of the Christie's auction in New York in 1991, he personally inspected the painting and verbally confirmed to the buyer that it was a product of Savery's own hand.

Literature

Kurt J. Müllenmeister: Roelant Savery. Die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, Freren 1988, p. 271, no. 162 (illus.).