(Courtrai 1576–1639 Utrecht)
Peasants near a ruinous watchtower,
signed lower centre: R. Savery,
oil on canvas, 90.5 x 127.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection of Count Włodzimierz Dzieduszycki (1825-1899), Palais Dzieduszycki, Lemberg/Lviv;
Private collection, Belgium since the 1950s

Exhibited:
Ghent, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Le Peinture dans les collections Gantoises, 8 March - 31 May 1953, no. 147;
Ghent, Musée de Beaux-Arts,  Roelandt Savery, 10 April -13 June 1954, no. 91;
Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, La Siècle de Rubens, 15 October - 12 December 1965, p. 235, no. 248

Literature:
S. Bergmans, La Peinture Ancienne, Ses Mystères, Ses Secrets, Brussels, 1952, pp 97-98, illustrated no. XLIV

The present canvas is a characteristic example of Roelant Savery’s rich and varied output during his Prague period, 1603-1612. Peasants near a ruinous watchtower contains within it all the many elements and motifs that made Savery the favoured court painter of Habsburg Emperor Rudolf II (1552–1612).

The fiddler in a feathered slouch hat and crimson-skirted maidens milling about a dramatic ruin, all framed by serpentine foliage giving way to a brilliant mountainous blue beyond both evoke the scenes of peasant life so memorably captured a generation before by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, but also show Savery’s adeptness at capturing nature. The dogs, pecking ducks, flapping birds, and, on the left, a crowing cock, would have satisfied the proclivities of Rudolf, whose vociferous thirst for art relating to the flora and fauna of his realms is well documented. However, despite Savery’s training, the setting here is not Flanders but likely the Böhmerwald, situated in what is now the Czech Republic, with the rustic, roughly flamboyant dress of the figures so typical of the ‘Brueghel of Bohemia.’

The beggar sitting on the rock in the mid-ground seems to be based on one of the many figure studies of Rudolf’s subjects that Savery made, such as Two Beggars conserved in the Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt, (inv. no. Hz 8743). The kittens playing on the drooping beam of the dilapidated shelter here distract from the artist’s signature placed on the stone below the beggar - a characteristically modest gesture from Savery who came from a family of Anabaptist religious refugees. Savery created everything from the aforementioned sketches of peasant costume, to mountain flowers (travelling also to Tyrol for this purpose). In 1616 he returned to the Low Countries, settling eventually in Utrecht, continuing his refined output to also include the exotica brought to Western Europe from afar, such as the Dodo, and the first tulips grown in the Netherlands.