1025 - Roelant Savery

Roelant Savery Landscape with Shepherds and a Horse-drawn Cart Oil on copper. 24.1 x 34.5 cm. Provenance Private collection, France. The present work was most likely painted during the final years of Savery's sojourn in Prague. In terms of style and composition, it is closely related to a signed and dated copper panel of the same subject from 1609, which was sold at Lempertz on 16 May 2015 (lot 1030). This finely executed painting on copper exemplifies in an almost paradigmatic way the characteristic features of Roelant Savery's style. For nearly ten years he served Emperor Rudolf II, travelling through the Bohemian territories of his realm, which extended as far as Tyrol and Trieste. The impressions he gathered in these regions - their landscapes, the peasants, shepherds, woodcutters and forest animals - became the unmistakable repertoire of motifs that defines his art. The composition still follows the classical formula derived from Jan Brueghel, with a shaded foreground and a bright, luminous distance dissolving in light. Here, however, Savery turns his attention to domesticated animals: horses, pigs, sheep, cattle, bulls and goats are all represented. The whole is executed with extraordinary refinement, an eye for detail and, at the same time, a certain effortless ease. Savery succeeds in conjuring his own mysterious universe within a relatively small space, without recourse to unnecessary anecdote. For comparative illustrations, see the printed catalogue as well as the PDF version.