A river landscape with shepherds making music among the animals

Savery's landscapes drew upon the detailed studies that the artist had made of birds and animals in the menageries and hunting fields of the Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, in whose service he worked from 1604-1613. It was there that he came into contact with the group of international artists that the Emperor had gathered around him, including Bartolomeus Spranger, Hans Hoffman, Mattheus Gundelach and Jacob Hoefnagel. Savery's fascination with nature, and the meticulously detailed manner in which he painted flora and fauna, stem from his stay at Rudolf's court.

In the 1620s, Savery was one of the most sought-after and highly paid artists in Utrecht. Alongside the realistic landscapes of his contemporaries, his romanticising, exotic and highly detailed scenes, which almost appear to belong to a bygone age, were well received by a large and affluent group of Netherlandish collectors. However, by the end of the decade, the quality of his output started to decline and he died in poverty and mental disarray in Utrecht.