Although he was part of an important artistic family, relatively little is known of the life of Jan Savery (1597–1654). Son of an Amsterdam painter, Jan became close after his father’s death to his more famous uncle, the artist Roelandt Savery (1576–1639). Although Roelandt worked as a court painter in Prague from 1603 – 1613, he returned to Amsterdam at the end of his imperial service and took Jan as his assistant. The two artists also worked in Utrecht. Jan was so strongly influenced by his uncle that their styles can be difficult to distinguish: in fact, Dodo Birds, like its companion sketch Elephants with a Monkey (also in the Crocker), is part of a large group of chalk drawings of animals that were all attributed to Roelandt until quite recently.(1) Joaneath Spicer has separated the chalk drawings into two categories: the first, by Roelandt, probably drawn from life at the imperial menagerie at Prague, is typified by a more naturalistic and “dignified” characterization of the animals. The second, by Jan, is notable for its expressive, often humorous depiction of animal personalities and relationships. Both Crocker drawings fall into this second category. Additionally, both drawings are signed with only the artist’s last name, a signature that Roelandt apparently did not use.(2)

First recorded by western explorers on the island of Mauritius around 1600, dodos were extinct before the end of the seventeenth century. Early depictions of the birds show them with webbed feet (as seen here), or without, chubby or slim, and colored or white, leading to centuries of consternation in the world of dodo scholarship. Accuracy was probably a secondary concern for most of the artists, especially in the case of this comical and endearing image. The Crocker birds reappear, sometimes slightly altered or reversed, in numerous paintings, drawings, and prints, not only by both of the Saverys and their contemporaries but by illustrators well into the nineteenth century.(3) According to an inscription on a drawing by Adriaen de Venne (1589–1662), a live dodo appeared in Amsterdam in 1626, but there is no reason to suppose, as one dodologist has posited, that this bird is depicted in the Crocker drawing, or that it was drawn from life.(4) The difficulty of establishing a Savery chronology, or even of separating the hands of the two artists, makes it impossible to determine whether the present drawing was the source of the many other dodos, or simply one version among many.

As Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann has noted of the Crocker Elephants with a Monkey, the detailed if fanciful settings and the signatures on both drawings suggest that they were part of a series of finished drawings intended for a collector.(5) Other animals depicted in the series include lions, monkeys, and camels. The early seventeenth-century fascination with natural wonders from distant lands would have made these drawings appealing additions to any number of collections or Wunderkammern.

Stacey Sell, in William Breazeale, with Cara Denison, Stacey Sell, and Freyda Spira, A Pioneering Collection: Master Drawings from the Crocker Art Museum, exh. cat. Sacramento and tour, 2010