Object data
oil on panel
support: height 61 cm × width 81.4 cm
depth 5 cm
Roelant Savery
Wild Boar Hunt in a Rocky Landscape
1620
Inscriptions
- signature and date, bottom right: R. / Savery / 1620
Technical notes
The oak support consists of three planks with a horizontal grain and is bevelled on the left and right sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1595. The panel could have been ready for use by 1606, but a date in or after 1612 is more likely. The ground layer is probably whitish. The painting technique is difficult to judge due to the poor condition.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 22 April 2002
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 21 September 2005
Condition
Poor. The convex support has instable joins. There are discoloured areas of retouching, and a strongly discoloured varnish. The paint surface is locally affected with small blisters, probably due to a problem in the ground layer.
Provenance
? Commissioned by or for the Oudezijdshuiszittenhuis, Oude Kerk, Amsterdam; ? transferred with this institution to Leprozengracht, Amsterdam, 1655; first recorded in this institution in the 18th century;1 transferred with this institution to the Nieuwezijdshuiszittenhuis, Prinsengracht, Amsterdam, 1808; transferred with this institution to the Armenhuis, Roetersstraat, Amsterdam, 1873; on loan to the museum from the City of Amsterdam since 2 October 1885
Object number: SK-C-447
Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Roelant Savery (Kortrijk c. 1578 - Utrecht 1639)
Roelant Savery was born in Kortrijk around 1578, going by the statements of his age in two attestations of 1618 and 1629. When the town fell to the Spanish in 1580 the family moved to Bruges, and then to Haarlem around 1585. According to Van Mander, Roelant was trained by his elder brother Jacob, who settled in Amsterdam in 1591. Roelant was living with him when the two brothers drew up their wills in 1602. After Jacob’s death in 1603, Roelant moved to Prague to work for Emperor Rudolf, and is first documented there in 1604. Between 1606 and 1608 he travelled to Tirol to make drawings of the landscapes there for the emperor. After Rudolf’s death in 1612, Savery carried on working for his successor, Matthias. In 1613 he was paid for a trip to Amsterdam, where in 1614 he made arrangements for the disposal of his brother’s estate after his widow’s death. He travelled back to Prague in 1615, but returned to Amsterdam in 1616 for the marriage of his nephew Salomon. The following year he is recorded as being a landscape painter in Amsterdam, and in 1618 he may have spent some time in Haarlem. He is also documented that same year in Utrecht, where he joined the Guild of St Luke in 1619. In 1621 he bought a house in Boterstraat that he shared with several members of his family, among them his nephew Hans II (1589-1664). It can be assumed that the latter, a landscape painter, who was also in Prague in 1615, was trained by his uncle, and that he worked closely with him, beginning in the 1620s. Roelant made another will in 1624 in which he left all his paintings and related drawings to Hans II.
Documents show that Roelant made good money with his brush. In 1626, the States of Utrecht paid 700 guilders for a painting that was presented to Amalia van Solms on the occasion of her marriage to Frederik Hendrik. In 1628 or 1629 he received 400 Reichsthalers for two paintings for the collection of the Elector of Liechtenstein. Nevertheless, he was declared bankrupt in 1638. Financially ruined and in a state of mental confusion in his closing years, he was buried in the Buurkerk in Utrecht on 23 February 1639.
Roelant Savery left a large oeuvre. From his early Amsterdam period came landscapes, animal, flower and genre pieces influenced by his brother Jacob, Hans Bol, Gillis van Coninxloo and Pieter Brueghel. In Prague he found himself in a very artistic milieu, and made countless drawings of such subjects as the landscape in the Tirol, peasants, and views of Prague. After his return to the Dutch Republic he concentrated mainly on such successful subjects as landscapes with exotic animals. His output became less balanced from the 1620s on as a result of his collaboration with Hans II. His followers included Gillis de Hondecoeter, Jacob Marel and Allaert van Everdingen.
Yvette Bruijnen, 2007
References
Van Mander 1604, fol. 260v; De Bie 1661, pp. 125-26; Von Sandrart 1675 (1925), pp. 132, 175-76, 242, 250; Campo Weyerman I, 1729, pp. 248-51; Erasmus 1908, pp. 3-13; Briels 1976, pp. 281-301; Spicer-Durham 1979, pp. 11-42; Dudok van Heel/Bok 1990; Bok in Amsterdam 1993, pp. 315-16; Briels 1997, pp. 377-79
Entry
This painting shows a compilation of hunting scenes that recur throughout Savery’s oeuvre. Erasmus had already pointed out that the boar hunt in the right foreground is the mirror image of the main subject in Savery’s Boar Hunt in the Museum Bredius in The Hague.2 It is also found in other paintings, either as the main subject or as part of a larger composition.3 The stag being attacked by hounds in the right middleground is the second hunting scene that is found in other paintings by Savery.4 Finally, the stag fleeing in the centre foreground and looking out at the viewer is another recurring element in his oeuvre.5
On the evidence of the reversed composition in the Museum Bredius, Erasmus suggested that a print may have been made after that work, and that Savery used it as the model for part of the Rijksmuseum painting, but no such print is known.6 What is clear is that Savery used existing models for the present work, since several paintings with identical hunting scenes predate it.7
Yvette Bruijnen, 2007
See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements
This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 267.
Literature
Erasmus 1908, p. 61, no. 6; Müllenmeister 1988, p. 231, no. 78
Collection catalogues
1886, p. 72, no. 321a; 1887, p. 153, no. 1288; 1903, p. 239, no. 2135; 1934, p. 258, no. 2135; 1960, p. 278, no. 2135; 1976, p. 500, no. C 447; 2007, no. 267
Citation
Y. Bruijnen, 2007, 'Roelant Savery, Wild Boar Hunt in a Rocky Landscape, 1620', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5387
(accessed 9 November 2024 02:26:09).