On 15 September, Artcurial in Paris will offer a small oak panel depicting a hunting scene as attribué à Roelandt Savery. The estimate is just €3,000-4,000. More interesting than the price, however, is the painting’s history: in 1925 and 1932 it was still attributed to Lucas de Wael, before later entering the Savery literature, with an explicit reservation concerning the handling of the animals.
A Roelandt Savery for €3,000 sounds tempting. But on 15 September, the auction house is not offering an accepted painting by Savery; it is offering an attribution: Scène de chasse dans un sous-bois de montagne, oil on panel, measuring 38 by 50 centimetres, with restorations. The catalogue wording is deliberately cautious: attribué à Roelandt Savery. Estimate: €3,000–4,000.[1]
Those few words make an important difference. The panel has lacked a stable identity for at least a century. At an auction held by J. Fiévez in Brussels on 21 December 1925, it was offered as a work by Lucas de Wael. More than half a century later, Kurt J. Müllenmeister included it as no. 102 in his 1988 critical catalogue raisonné of Savery’s paintings. Yet even there, the question was not settled: Müllenmeister expressed reservations about the attribution because of the handling of the animals.[2]
This gives the painting an unusually transparent attribution history. The question is not simply whether a forgotten Savery is being offered cheaply. More interesting is why the painting apparently possesses enough Savery-like qualities to have repeatedly found its way into his orbit, without ever becoming fully accepted as an autograph work.
The Doubt Lies Precisely Where the Eye Is Drawn
At first glance, it is not difficult to understand why Savery’s name has become attached to the picture. On the right, a dense mass of woodland occupies almost the entire picture plane. Old tree trunks, gnarled roots and rocky formations create a steep, somewhat theatrical space. To the left, the landscape suddenly opens out: the eye is led down a slope towards a cooler, blue-green distance, with a settlement low on the horizon and towering clouds above.
The animals are scattered between these two worlds. Deer appear beneath the trees and among the rocks; other creatures partially disappear into the brown and green foreground. They are not merely incidental staffage but help guide the eye through the woodland. The contrast between the dark right-hand side and the atmospheric opening to the left also gives the panel a greater sense of spatial ambition than its modest dimensions might suggest.
The pictorial vocabulary is undoubtedly close to Savery’s. The Rijksmuseum, for example, owns the signed and dated Wild Boar Hunt in a Rocky Landscape of 1620, in which a boar hunt, fleeing deer, steep rock formations and a distant view are likewise brought together within a densely constructed landscape.[3] It is not a direct compositional comparison, but it clearly demonstrates that hunting, wild animals and mountainous woodland scenery all belong firmly within Savery’s repertoire.
This is precisely what makes Müllenmeister’s reservation so interesting. In reproductions of the Artcurial panel, some of the animal figures appear less convincingly handled than the landscape surrounding them. That in itself is no basis for rejecting an attribution. The catalogue also notes that the painting has undergone restoration. Nevertheless, one can at least understand how the contrast between the convincing rhythm of trunks, rocks and spatial recession on the one hand, and some rather more awkwardly rendered animals on the other, may have prompted his doubts.
The Rijksmuseum currently catalogues a signed painting of 1623, The Poet Crowned by Two Apes at the Feast of the Animals, as workshop of Roelant Savery. Similar considerations are involved there: according to the museum catalogue, the animals are less convincingly painted and less successfully integrated into the landscape than in secure works by Savery. Müllenmeister suggested Hans Savery II as a possible author, although his oeuvre remains too poorly defined for that proposal to be established convincingly.[4]
How Low Is €3,000–4,000, Really?
From a market perspective, the difference between an accepted Savery and a Savery candidate quickly becomes apparent. In March 2025, Artcurial sold Taureaux, perroquet et autres animaux dans un paysage rocheux, a much smaller oak panel measuring 23.5 by 26.5 centimetres, fully catalogued as a work by Roelandt Savery. It had an old Brussels provenance, had reportedly been exhibited in Ghent in 1954 according to a label, and appears as no. 116 in Müllenmeister’s catalogue. Against an estimate of €10,000-15,000, Artcurial published a result of €13,120.[5]
A stronger market comparison in terms of scale is Christie’s A rocky wooded landscape with birds, deer and other animals. Measuring 36.5 by 49.7 centimetres, the panel is almost exactly the same size as the present lot and is likewise included in Müllenmeister, as no. 159. During the sale process, it was also discovered to be signed and dated 1627. Christie’s offered it in New York in May 2023 without reserve, with an estimate of $30,000-50,000.[6] The contrast with €3,000–4,000 is striking, but also entirely logical: a signed and dated work catalogued without any qualification of attribution belongs to a different market category from lot 151.
More recently, on 28 April 2026, Dorotheum offered the early A wooded river landscape with hunters. The auction house dated it to circa 1603 and estimated it at €30,000–40,000. It realised €44,000 including buyer’s premium.[7] Here too, hunters, animals, dense woodland and an open distant view formed central elements of the composition. The painting was larger, however, belonged to a different period, and was offered as an unqualified work by Savery.
What Is Really at Stake with Lot 151
This also makes clear why the painting deserves our attention. The panel contains enough of the landscape world associated with Savery for the attribution not to be dismissed out of hand. In that respect, it differs from the many Old Master paintings that appear on the market accompanied by an optimistic famous name and little supporting evidence.
Here, the progression can almost be traced step by step: De Wael in 1925, De Wael again in 1932, Savery in the critical oeuvre research of 1988 but with reservations, and Savery once more in 2026, albeit with the necessary qualification attribué à.
The eventual auction price will prove nothing in art-historical terms. But the extent to which collectors are prepared to pay for this documented uncertainty may tell us something about a small but fascinating corner of the Old Master market: the territory in which a famous name is not being bought as a certainty, but as a question that remains unresolved.
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Notes and Sources
[1] Artcurial, Maîtres anciens & du XIXe siècle, Paris, 15 September 2026, lot 151, “Attribué à Roelandt Savery, Scène de chasse dans un sous-bois de montagne”; oil on panel, 38 × 50 cm; estimate €3,000–4,000.
[2] Kurt J. Müllenmeister, Roelant Savery. Die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, Freren, 1988, p. 243, no. 102.
[3] Rijksmuseum, Roelant Savery, Wild Boar Hunt in a Rocky Landscape, 1620, oil on panel, 61 × 81.4 cm, inv. SK-C-447; signed and dated.
[4] Yvette Bruijnen, “workshop of Roelant Savery, The Poet Crowned by Two Apes at the Feast of the Animals, 1623”, in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2007.
[5] Artcurial, Maîtres anciens & du XIXe siècle, Paris, 27 March 2025, lot 219, Roelandt Savery, Taureaux, perroquet et autres animaux dans un paysage rocheux, estimate €10,000–15,000; published result €13,120.
[6] Christie’s, New York, Old Master Paintings & Sculpture Online, 25 May 2023, lot 20, Roelandt Savery, A rocky wooded landscape with birds, deer and other animals, 36.5 × 49.7 cm, estimate $30,000–50,000.
[7] Dorotheum, Old Master Paintings, Vienna, 28 April 2026, lot 77, Roelandt Savery, A wooded river landscape with hunters, estimate €30,000–40,000; realised price €44,000 including buyer’s premium.
