Jan or Hans Savery the Younger (1589, Haarlem

Haarlem

Haarlem is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland, the northern half of Holland, which at one time was the most powerful of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic...

 – bur. 7 August 1654, Utrecht

Utrecht (city)

Utrecht city and municipality is the capital and most populous city of the Dutch province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, and is the fourth largest city of the Netherlands with a population of 312,634 on 1 Jan 2011.Utrecht's ancient city centre features...

) was a Dutch Golden Age

Dutch Golden Age

The Golden Age was a period in Dutch history, roughly spanning the 17th century, in which Dutch trade, science, military and art were among the most acclaimed in the world. The first half is characterised by the Eighty Years' War till 1648...

 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

-Biography:According to Van Mander in 1604, he was the best pupil of Hans Bol and taught his brother Roelant Savery and Frans de Grebber, then a promising young painter and tapestry worker in Haarlem, how to paint landscapes. He died of the plague in Amsterdam...

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

Roelant Savery

Roelant Savery , was a Flanders-born Dutch Golden Age painter.-Life:Savery was born in Kortrijk...

 (1576 - 1639), all three painters born in Kortrijk

Kortrijk

Kortrijk ; , ; ) is a Belgian city and municipality located in the Flemish province West Flanders...

 in the Spanish Netherlands who had moved north to the city of Haarlem between 1584 and 1586. He was likely a pupil of his uncle Roelant, whom he accompanied at the royal court in Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

 before 1613, assisted in Utrecht from 1619 on and whose work shop he continued after 1639.

Hans Savery is best-known for his 1651 depiction of the dodo

Dodo

The dodo was a flightless bird endemic to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. Related to pigeons and doves, it stood about a meter tall, weighing about , living on fruit, and nesting on the ground....

 now held by the Oxford University Museum of Natural History

Oxford University Museum of Natural History

The Oxford University Museum of Natural History, sometimes known simply as the Oxford University Museum, 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...

. It is widely believed that Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...

 (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

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...

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

Sources