Jan or Hans Savery the Younger (1589,

Haarlem Haarlem (; predecessor of ''Harlem'' in English language, English) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the Provinces of the Nether ...

– bur. 7 August 1654,

Utrecht Utrecht ( ; ; ) is the List of cities in the Netherlands by province, fourth-largest city of the Netherlands, as well as the capital and the most populous city of the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of Utrecht (province), Utrecht. The ...

) was a

Dutch Golden Age The Dutch Golden Age ( ) was a period in the history of the Netherlands which roughly lasted from 1588, when the Dutch Republic was established, to 1672, when the '' Rampjaar'' occurred. During this period, Dutch trade, scientific development ...

painter. Though more often referred to as ''Jan'' in connection with his best-known painting, he signed his works with ''Hans'', both names being derivatives of ''Johannes''.

Biography

Savery was the son of

Jacob Savery Jacob Savery or Jacob Savery the ElderName variations: Jacob Maertensz. Saverij and Jacques Savery (1566 – buried 23 April 1603) was a Flemish painter, etcher and draughtsman. He was trained in Antwerp and later moved to the Dutch Republic aft ...

(ca 1565 - 1603) and nephew of Hans Savery the Elder (1564 - ca. 1623) and

Roelant Savery Roelant Savery (or ''Roeland(t) Maertensz Saverij'', or ''de Savery'', or many variants; 1576 – buried 25 February 1639) was a Flanders-born Dutch Golden Age painter. Life Savery was born in Kortrijk. Like so many other artists, he belonged ...

(1576–1639), all three painters born in

Kortrijk Kortrijk ( , ; or ''Kortrik''; ), sometimes known in English as Courtrai or Courtray ( ), is a Belgian City status in Belgium, city and Municipalities in Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Region, Flemish Provinces of Belgium, province of We ...

in the

Spanish Netherlands The Spanish Netherlands (; ; ; ) (historically in Spanish: , the name "Flanders" was used as a '' pars pro toto'') was the Habsburg Netherlands ruled by the Spanish branch of the Habsburgs from 1556 to 1714. They were a collection of States of t ...

who had moved north to the city of Haarlem between 1584 and 1586.Hans Savery II
in the

RKD The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: ), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center in the world. The center specializes in document ...

, the Netherlands Institute for Art History. He was likely a pupil of his uncle Roelant, whom he accompanied at the royal court in

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

before 1613, assisted in Utrecht from 1619 on and whose workshop he continued after 1639. Hans Savery is best known for his 1651 depiction of the

dodo The dodo (''Raphus cucullatus'') is an extinction, extinct flightless bird that was endemism, endemic to the island of Mauritius, which is east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. The dodo's closest relative was the also-extinct and flightles ...

now held by the

Oxford University Museum of Natural History The Oxford University Museum of Natural History (OUMNH) is a museum displaying many of the University of Oxford's natural history specimens, located on Parks Road in Oxford, England. It also contains a lecture theatre which is used by the univers ...

. It is widely believed that

Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet, mathematician, photographer and reluctant Anglicanism, Anglican deacon. His most notable works are ''Alice ...

(who was also an Oxford mathematician) was inspired by Savery's image of the dodo hanging at Oxford to include the creature as a character in

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (also known as ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English Children's literature, children's novel by Lewis Carroll, a mathematics university don, don at the University of Oxford. It details the story of a ...

. His uncle Roelandt probably supplied the original works on which Jan Savery based his dodo painting.

Sources

1589 births 1654 deaths Dutch Golden Age painters Dutch male painters Painters from Haarlem {{Netherlands-painter-stub