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Archives of natural history 31 (1): 57–79. 2004 © J. P. Hume & A. S. Cheke 2004
The white dodo of Réunion Island: unravelling a
scientifi c and historical myth
JULIAN PENDER HUMEA and ANTHONY S. CHEKEB
A The Bird Group, Department of Zoology, The Natural History Museum, Akeman Street, Tring, HP23 6AP,
Hertfordshire,
and Palaeobiology Research Group, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Portsmouth University,
Portsmouth, PO1 3QL, Hampshire, UK.
B (corresponding author) 139 Hurst Street, Oxford, OX4 1HE, UK.
ABSTRACT: The supposed white dodo of Réunion Island (Indian Ocean) arose from a merging of
travellers’ tales of large whitish birds with some enigmatic paintings of white dodos painted in mid- to
late- seventeenth-century Holland. Sub-fossil bone discoveries in the 1970s onwards revealed that the
bird which travellers called a solitaire was a large, quasi-fl ightless ibis, while the Dutch paintings turn
out to have been based on a much earlier picture by Roelant Savery of a whitish specimen of a Mauritius
dodo (Raphus cucullatus), painted in Prague around 1611. Savery’s dodo images impact on this story at
various points and are discussed in detail. There are geological reasons for believing dodos, evolving in
Mauritius, would have been already fl ightless before Réunion emerged and hence could not have colonised
that more recent volcanic island. No contemporary images are known of the Réunion solitaire (the ibis,
Threskiornis solitarius) and no specimens were brought to Europe alive or dead.
KEY WORDS: Holsteyn – Withoos – Savery – solitaire – Ornithaptera solitaria – Raphus cucullatus
–Threskiornis solitarius – Mauritius – Rodrigues – Mascarenes.
INTRODUCTION
The former existence of a whitish-coloured species of dodo on Réunion Island, distinct
from the well-known grey dodo (Raphus cucullatus) of neighbouring Mauritius, has been
generally accepted by ornithologists for nearly two centuries, but is based on a series of
misconceptions and erroneous attributions. The description in 1987, from sub-fossil bones,
of an extinct, quasi-fl ightless ibis, combined with the continued failure to fi nd dodo-type
remains on Réunion, has made the likelihood of such a dodo increasingly untenable, but
for the existence of a series of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings depicting white dodos.
In this paper we review the developments that led to the “Réunion white dodo” becoming a
scientifi c reality, and offer a new explanation for the images of white dodos in the enigmatic
Dutch paintings. A short note on the geological history of the islands is added to demonstrate
that it is most unlikely that any dodo could have reached Réunion.
TRAVELLERS’ OBSERVATIONS OF LARGE WHITE BIRDS ON RÉUNION
When Ysbrantz Bontekoe (1646), unable to reach Mauritius because of contrary winds,
stopped in Réunion in 1619 to allow his sick sailors to recover on shore, he claimed to
have seen, amongst other birds, “dodos that had small wings yet could not fl y, they were so
fat they could scarce move and as they walked they dragged their backend on the ground”
(Bodde-Hodgkinson and Geyl, 1929).1 Although not a single, subsequent visitor reported
dodos, this report by the famous Dutch adventurer was the foundation of a belief in a Réunion
58 WHITE DODO OF RÉUNION – UNRAVELLING A MYTH
dodo that has persisted to the present time.
Beginning in 1646, the French made increasing use of Réunion, fi rst as a bolt-hole from
Madagascar and a place to exile unruly colonists, and later as a settlement and way-station
to India (Guet, 1888; Lougnon, 1970; Toussaint, 1972). French accounts (see Cheke, 1987)
referred regularly to a bird called a solitaire, which was the size of a turkey, whitish with
black wing-tips and tail, a beak like a woodcock (Dubois, 1674; Oliver, 1897) and iridescent
neck and wing feathers (Sauvaget, 1999; Mourer et alii, 1995b).2 According to Dubois
(1674) it could fl y but rarely did so. Feuilley, who visited Réunion in 1704 (Lougnon,
1939), described its diet as “worms and fi lth taken in or on the soil” (Cheke, 1987; Mourer
et alii, 1995a, 1995b) This bird roughly matches the earliest report: Tatton’s account in 1613
(Purchas, 1905: 3: 351–352) of an unnamed “great fowl the bigness of a turkie, very fat,
and so short-winged that they cannot fl ie, beeing white”. Unlike Mauritian dodos, several of
which were taken alive to Europe, India and Java (Cheke, 1987), the only recorded attempt
to transport Réunion solitaires by ship ended in their rapid death. In 1667 Abbé Carré took
two on board for eventual presentation to the French king (Lougnon, 1970), but reported that
“as soon as they were in the vessel they died of melancholy, not wanting to drink or eat”.3
In 1691 the French Huguenot refugee François Leguat and some companions attempted to
settle on Rodrigues Island, 574 kilometres east of Mauritius, and stayed two years (Leguat,
1707; North-Coombes, 1991). Leguat later wrote about a large fl ightless bird he had watched
there, calling it a solitaire, borrowing the name from a tract that his sponsor, the Marquis
Henri Duquesne, had written about Réunion, the originally intended locale for the fl edgling
settlement (Racault, 1995).4
SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION OF TRAVELLERS’ ACCOUNTS
In the mid-eighteenth century European encyclopaedists compiled the fi rst critical and
comprehensive works on the world’s plants and animals, and Buffon (1770–1783), in his
volumes on birds, included the following remarks in his article on the dodo: “The Dodo
appears to be a native of and particular to Mauritius and Réunion, and probably the lands
of that continent which are the least far away; but I am unaware that any voyager has
mentioned seeing them anywhere but these two islands.”5 Quite why Buffon incorporated
Réunion into the dodo’s distribution is not clear, as he appears to have been unaware of
Bontekoe’s travels. Under his solitaire Buffon combined Leguat’s bird in Rodrigues and
Carré’s account from Réunion with a bird François Cauche (1651) called “oiseau de Nazareth”
seen on Mauritius (clearly, from the description, a dodo). Buffon thus appeared to believe
that Réunion was home to both a dodo and a solitaire.6 By this time, the Mauritian dodo
had been named Raphus cucullatus and later Didus ineptus by Linnaeus (see Table 1 for a
summary nomenclature), the former name eventually becoming accepted under the rules of
zoological nomenclature; the Rodrigues solitaire was called Didus solitarius by Gmelin in
1788 (Hachisuka, 1953; see also Table 1).
After a period when the lack of specimens caused many to believe the dodo was a mythical
creature7, its reality was resurrected by, inter alia, Duncan (1828), Blainville (1829) and, most
famously, Strickland (Strickland and Melville, 1848). Strickland, who was the fi rst to examine
actual remains of the Rodrigues solitaire, realised its generic distinctiveness and created the
new genus Pezophaps for the species, while keeping it close to the dodo as a relative of
the pigeons. The separation of dodos and solitaires into a separate family Raphidae in the
59WHITE DODO OF RÉUNION – UNRAVELLING A MYTH
Columbiformes was fi rst proposed by Fürbringer in 1888 (Hachisuka, 1953). The shortage
of material evidence was due to the dodo and solitaires becoming extinct before systematic
natural history collections were established: the Mauritius dodo was last reliably reported in
1662, the Réunion solitaire in 1708, and the Rodrigues solitaire in 1755 (Cheke, 1987).
In the fi rst part of The dodo and its kindred (Strickland and Melville, 1848), Strickland
reviewed the historical evidence available to him, and brought together four old accounts
from Réunion, those of Tatton, Bontekoe, Carr‚ and Dubois. He pointed out that Bontekoe
had borrowed a Mauritian dodo to illustrate an edition of his account and that Dubois’ more
detailed description indicated a somewhat different type of bird. He cautiously concluded
that “Bourbon [Réunion] was formerly inhabited by a brevipennate bird called the solitaire,
whose white or light yellow plumage and woodcock-like beak proves it to have been distinct
from the dodo of Mauritius and from the so-called solitaire of Rodrigues” (Strickland and
Melville, 1848: 59). Sélys-Longchamps (1848) promptly gave this bird the name Apterornis
solitarius (Hachisuka, 1953; see also Table 1)8, and Schlegel (1854: 389) attempted a pictorial
reconstruction from the descriptions, his drawing (Figure 1) resembling an ibis or stork
(Figure 2) rather than a dodo.
THE WHITE DODO PAINTINGS – DISCOVERY, INTERPRETATION AND
SPECULATION
In 1856 William Coker was shown by a friend a small painting, claimed as from Persia
(but later identifi ed as by Pieter Withoos), of a dodo, pure white with a yellow wing, posed
amongst typically European waterfowl by the waterside (Figure 3). Coker’s (1856) letter to
the Illustrated London news was accompanied by a poor copy of the image and an editorial
note quoting John Gould, who suggested “that the artist had made his sketch of the dodo
from a Mauritius or Bourbon specimen, for we have no evidence that this bird was ever
found elsewhere”. William Tegetmeier (1866) rediscovered this painting, after which Alfred
Newton (1869) devoted a long article to it, identifying the artist and endorsing the emergent
TABLE 1. Scientifi c names of dodos and solitaires. Although these have been given passim
in the text, we felt it might help clarity to tabulate the various names and their synonyms
(see Hachisuka (1953) for a complete nomenclatural history to that date).
Current name Other citations
Mauritius (or Grey) dodo Raphus cucullatus Linnaeus 1758 Didus ineptus Linnaeus 1766
Rodrigues solitaire Pezophaps solitarius (Gmelin) Didus solitarius Gmelin 1788
Réunion “solitaire” = ibis Threskiornis solitarius (Sélys) Borbonibis latipes Mourer & Moutou
1987
“Réunion (or White) dodo” Ornithaptera solitaria (Sélys) Apterornis solitarius Sélys-
Longschamps 1854
Raphus solitarius (Sélys)
Didus solitarius (Sélys)
D. apterornis [comb. nudum]
Victoriornis imperialis Hachisuka 1937
(part)
60 WHITE DODO OF RÉUNION – UNRAVELLING A MYTH
view that it must represent the big extinct bird from Réunion.9 Newton also surmised that a
living example had been brought from Réunion to Holland.10 Thus did the descriptions of the
Réunion solitaire and this dodo image become merged into the “White Dodo of Réunion”.11
Newton’s interpretation became the orthodox view and was endorsed and expanded on by
Oliver (1897), Rothschild (1907, 1919), and Oudemans (1917, 1918). Oudemans (1918)
baldy stated “as is well-known, the White Dodo (Apterornis solitarius Sélys) inhabited the
island of Mascarenhas (Bourbon)”.
Around the same time that the Withoos painting was discovered in England, two other
white dodo paintings were discovered in Holland (Millies, 1868), the work of a different
artist, Pieter Holsteyn. Only one was in the public domain; it was originally attributed to the
elder Holsteyn, and estimated to date from around 1638. Unlike their British contemporaries,
neither Millies (1868) nor Biederman (1898), who published a list of dodo images, thought
this painting represented a bird from Réunion, but assumed it was a white-coloured Mauritian
dodo. Three white dodo paintings by Holsteyn are now known: one is preserved in the
Teyler’s Museum, Haarlem (Plomp, 1997; Ziswiler, 1996), and another in The Natural
History Museum, Tring (Figure 5). The whereabouts of the third, reproduced by Oudemans
(1917), is uncertain.12
Pieter Holsteyn, father and son
The Holsteyn and Withoos paintings are clearly cognate (Figures 3 and 5). The Holsteyn bird
paintings, following recent research (Dumas and Rijdt, 1994; Plomp, 1997; contra Jackson,
1999) are now attributed the younger Pieter Holsteyn (1614–1687) and not to his father Pieter
Pietersz Holsteyn (1585–1662).13 There was a school of Dutch bird painting during the period
1670–1700 in which several artists, including Rochus van Veen, Johannes Bronkhurst and
Pieter Withoos, produced similar work. The corpus of Holsteyn birds fi ts this style closely,
suggesting the commonly accepted date of 1638 for the dodo paintings is wrong (Dumas
Figure 1. Hermann Schlegel’s reconstruction of the Réunion
solitaire (from Schlegel, 1854). © The Natural History Museum,
London; reproduced by permission.
Figure 2 . Sketches of heads of sacred ibis,
Threskiornis aethiopica, Réunion “solitaire” (=
ibis) T. solitaria, and woodcock, Scolopax rusticola
(J. P. Hume).
61WHITE DODO OF RÉUNION – UNRAVELLING A MYTH
Figure 3. The Withoos white dodo: the original by Pieter Withoos in the library of the Rothschild Museum, The Natural
History Museum, Tring. © The Natural History Museum, London; reproduced by permission.
Figure 4. The Withoos white dodo. Copy by Joseph Smit, reworked and with fewer birds (from
Newton, 1867). © The Natural History Museum, London; reproduced by permission.
62 WHITE DODO OF RÉUNION – UNRAVELLING A MYTH
and Rijdt, 1994). By 1670 the elder Holsteyn was dead and, in any case, an earlier work of
his (from 1621) shows a distinctly different style of depicting birds (Plomp, 1997).
Pieter Withoos and the multiplication of a single original
Pieter Withoos (1654–1693), second son and pupil of artist Matthias Withoos (1627–1693)
(Warr, 1996; Jackson, 1999), specialised in birds, insects and fl owers, and clearly copied
his white dodo from the (putatively) earlier and less elaborate Holsteyn compositions, as
already noted by Cheke (1987) and Ziswiler (1996). The literature suggests that there are
(or were) two (Oudemans, 1917; Hachisuka, 1953; Fuller, 2002) or “several” (Fuller, 1987)
Withoos originals, but this is due to misinterpretation. Oudemans (1917) and Hachisuka
(1953) used minor differences in verbal descriptions to conclude that the painting discussed
by Coker (1856) was not the same as that “discovered” by Tegetmeier (1866) and discussed
by Newton (1869). They ignored Newton’s clear statement that both the earlier articles were
discussing the same original, then in the hands of Mr C. Dare of Clattenford in the Isle
of Wight. Hachisuka (1953) and Fuller (1987) assumed the Coker painting was missing
and were unaware of the whereabouts of the Tegetmeier one following Lord Rothschild’s
death. In fact the sole original in Britain was sold to Lord Rothschild on the death of Mr
Dare in 1918 (Rothschild, 1919), and remains in the library of the Rothschild Museum in
Tring, now part of The Natural History Museum (see colour reproduction in Warr, 1996:
Figure 5. Pieter Holsteyn’s white dodo. Previously unpublished original (reference 88 o H) in The Natural History
Museum, London. This painting differs only in minor details from the two others by this artist, one in the Teylers
Museum, Haarlem, the other of unknown current location. © The Natural History Museum, London; reproduced by
permission.
63WHITE DODO OF RÉUNION – UNRAVELLING A MYTH
frontispiece).14 Rothschild (1919) himself claimed there was a second Withoos white dodo,
but in Holland – we think this was imaginary, as Marijke Besselink, who has researched dodo
paintings there, has been unable to trace any additional Withoos dodos.15 A further source of
confusion is that Newton (1867) illustrated his article with a copy of the Withoos, re-worked
in mirror-image by Joseph Smit (see Figure 4); it is this one, lacking several of the birds
in Withoos’ original, that is often reproduced and cited as the “Withoos” (e. g. Oudemans,
1917; Oliver, 1897; Lougnon, 1970; Ziswiler, 1996; Fuller, 1987, 2001). Oudemans (1917)
even reproduced the dreadful woodcut from the Illustrated London news (Coker, 1856) as
an original Withoos.
Misinterpretations on a grand scale
By the early 1900s, with only the pictures and travellers’ descriptions to work with, some
writers gave themselves over entirely to speculation. Oudemans (1917, 1918) convinced
himself he could distinguish the two sexes of white dodo and discussed their mating habits
and fat-cycle.16 He even argued that an almost black dodo painted by Hoefnagel in Prague17,
a dodo attributed to Goeimare18, a head by Saftleven (see below) and the large grey dodo
by Jan Savery in Oxford were plumage varieties of the white dodo (all reproduced in
Ziswiler, 1996). Rothschild (1919), discussing his recently acquired Withoos painting, also
speculated on sex differences. Renshaw (1938) endorsed Oudemans’ ideas and went on to
claim for the white dodo a skull in Prague and “two skeletons in Cambridge” – not bad for
a bird with no physical remains.19 Hachisuka (1937, 1953) went so far as to propose that
the discrepancies between travellers’ descriptions meant there must have been two species
of “didine” bird on Réunion, a dodo and a solitaire, thus inadvertently reviving Buffon’s
supposition from the 1770s. To the dodo, which he called Victoriornis imperialis20, he
assigned the white dodo paintings and the accounts of fat birds by Tatton21 and Bontekoe;
to the solitaire, retaining Sélys-Longchamps’ name Ornithaptera solitaria, he assigned
the taller athletic birds reported by Dubois and Carré (reproduced in Lougnon, 1970).
For Mauritian dodos, Hachisuka (1953) readily accepted Oudemans’ suggestion (1917)
that variations in appearance could be accounted for by a seasonal fat-cycle22 and age/sex
differences, but applied totally different criteria to the Réunion birds. Only Greenway (1958),
Lüttschwager (1961) and Storer (1970) sounded notes of caution. Greenway (1958) pointed
out that there was no reason to believe in two species on Réunion and nothing fi rm to
link the Withoos painting to that island, although he nonetheless accepted the attribution.
Lüttschwager (1961) noted that the Withoos image proved nothing without solid evidence
from bones. Storer (1970) warned against attempting to assign the Réunion bird to either
of the existing Raphid genera when there was nothing material to go on. This trend had
started with Schlegel (1854), but was followed initially by only a minority of writers (e.
g. Newton, 1888; Kinnear, 1937; Berlioz, 1946; Greenway, 1958). Bizarrely it has actually
accelerated since Storer’s admonition (e.g. Morony et alii, 1975; Walters, 1980; Fuller,
1987; Balouet and Alibert, 1990; Monroe and Sibley, 1993; Gibbs et alii, 2001, all of
whom included the Réunion bird in Raphus).23 These authors all ignored Storer’s important
additional warning: “I predict that if and when remains of such birds are found on Réunion,
they will prove to be unrelated to either to the Dodo or the [Rodrigues] Solitaire, and I
would not be surprised if they proved to be derived from rails or some group other than
pigeons”. How right he turned out to be.
64 WHITE DODO OF RÉUNION – UNRAVELLING A MYTH
THE SUB-FOSSIL IBIS AND ITS RECOGNITION AS THE TRAVELLERS’
SOLITAIRE
In 1974 the fi rst sub-fossil bird remains were found on Réunion but they were not reported
on until 1987; they included a bone described by Cowles (1987) as from a stork (Ciconia
sp.). Further excavations resulted in more Ciconiiform bones which were assigned by Mourer
and Moutou (1987) to a new and extinct species of ibis (Borbonibis latipes); Cowles (1994)
subsequently confi rmed that his “stork” bone belonged to this ibis. The 1987 publication
prompted one of us (ASC) to suggest to François Moutou, one of the co-authors, that the
new ibis was in fact the solitaire of the old accounts.24 However it was not until 1995 that
they confi rmed this identity in print, adopting Sélys-Longchamps’ specifi c epithet solitarius,
and re-assigning the bird to the sacred ibis genus Threskiornis (Mourer et alii, 1995a, 1995b,
1999). Despite intensive searches in recent years (Mourer et alii, 1999) no dodo-type bones
have been found, but this has not prevented some authors from using the white dodo pictures
to maintain a belief (Gibbs et alii, 2001) or a hope (Fuller, 2001, 2002) that there was also
a dodo on Réunion.
THE REAL ORIGIN OF THE WHITE DODO PAINTINGS
Until now the basis for Holsteyn’s white dodos (and hence Withoos’s copy) has remained
obscure. This has permitted speculation that living white dodos were taken from Réunion
to Holland in the mid-1600s. Before presenting our new evidence we should say that this
argument was always weak. Dutch vessels rarely called at Réunion, which has no natural
harbour, preferring the much better anchorages at Mauritius (Moree, 1998). We know of
Dutch landings only in 1612 (Brial, 2001), 1619 (Bontekoe, 1646), and two in 1663 (Chijs,
1891); itineraries for all Dutch voyages are given in Bruijn et alii (1979–1987). The 1663
visits were at around the right period for live birds to be in Holland around 1670, the revised
date for Holsteyn’s paintings, but in both cases the Dutch ships were heading to the Far
East, not Europe.
This speculation becomes irrelevant as we have discovered the original from which
Holsteyn’s dodos were derived. It is a painting entitled “Landscape with Orpheus and the
animals” (Figure 6) painted by Roelant Savery in or about 1611 (see Müllenmeister, 1988:
plate 37), previously unappreciated by ornithologists.25 Savery was at that time contracted,
as were so many other Dutch and Flemish artists, to the court of the Holy Roman Emperor,
Rudolf II, in Prague. Savery’s main job was to paint Tyrolean and other landscapes, to which
he also added classical and mythological themes, in which he included numerous animals and
birds (Müllenmeister, 1985, 1988, 1991). In the 1611 painting, Savery included in the bottom
right-hand corner a small white dodo with a yellow wing. This is the earliest of Savery’s
many dodo images, the only one to show a white bird, and the only one done in Prague.
The manuscript catalogue of the imperial collection by Daniel Fröschl, compiled between
1607 and 1611, includes as item number 135 the following: “1 Indian stuffed bird, called a
walghvogel by the Dutch according Carolus Clusius. It has a great round body the size of a
goose or larger, an ugly large beak, small wings which preclude it from fl ying, and a dirty
off-white colouring [our italics]” (Wissen, 1995; Bauer and Haupt, 1976).26 Thus in Prague
in 1611 there was a whitish specimen of a dodo from Mauritius, which Savery slipped into
the corner of his “Landscape with Orpheus ...” painting. The stance, the direction the bird
65WHITE DODO OF RÉUNION – UNRAVELLING A MYTH
Figure 6. Roelant Savery’s white dodo: “Landscape with Orpheus and the animals”, painted in Prague around 1611 with (inset) detail of the dodo.
Reproduced from Müllenmeister (1988: plate 37), with permission of Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz.
66 WHITE DODO OF RÉUNION – UNRAVELLING A MYTH
faces and the colouration of the dodo in Savery’s painting closely match Holsteyn’s much
later version, though Holsteyn took some artistic license in depicting the bill27 and details
of the wing. This white specimen was presumably additional to the blackish one (probably
a juvenile) painted at around the same time by Hoefnagel; one of these exhibits no doubt
later yielded the extant Prague skull (Wissen, 1995).
SAVERY’S DODO IMAGES AND THE ORIGIN OF BONTEKOE’S RÉUNION DODO
ENGRAVING
Holsteyn’s fanciful wing feathers have been for some a stumbling block to accepting the bird
as authentic; for others, evidence of a different (Réunion) species of dodo. However they
rather closely resemble the roughly drawn wing on one of the birds in another of Savery’s
works (Figure 7): a drawing of three dodos preserved in the Crocker Art Gallery, Sacramento,
California and rediscovered in 1950 (Eeckhout, 1954; Friedmann, 1956; Ziswiler, 1996).28
As Friedmann (1956) pointed out, the left-hand bird is, mirror-reversed, clearly the basis of
the engraving, by Roelant’s nephew Salomon, used to illustrate Bontekoe’s visit to Réunion
(Figure 8); it was also used to depict the Mauritian dodo in various editions of the amplifi ed
Dutch version of Pliny’s Natural history, and Joris Spilbergen’s voyages (Oudemans, 1917;
Hachisuka, 1953; Wissen, 1995). The right-hand fi gure was used by Savery’s associate
Gillis de Hondecoeter as the basis for his dodo in a well-known composition “Perseus and
Andromeda” dated 1627, often reproduced (e. g. Broderip, 1853; Hachisuka, 1953; Wissen,
1995; Ziswiler, 1996).29 It is not known to what extent the Holsteyns were familiar with
Savery’s work, but copying amongst artists and the use of stock images was common practise
at that time, presumably to speed up the output of paintings before there was any kind of
mechanical reproduction of colour images.30
Roelant Savery went on to include dodos in a further fi ve pictures painted up to and
including 1626, using the same stock image, often in the same corner (bottom right-hand)
of the composition.31 The only major difference is that the overall colour was changed from
white to grey, and the wing from yellow to whitish, presumably as a result of information
on the bird’s normal appearance gleaned from travellers after he re-visited Holland in 1612–
1613 and/or after he returned there in 1616.32 After 1626, the putative date of the Crocker
Gallery sketch, his dodos are more lively, variously positioned and doing different things:
standing staring at an eel, scratching its face with its rear towards the viewer, or prancing
about. According to a note attached to his pen-sketch of a dodo, Adriaen van der Venne saw
a live bird in Amsterdam in 1626 (Millies, 1868; Hachisuka, 1953; Wissen, 1995), though
the sketch itself is a classic Savery-style ‘stock’ dodo. We believe Savery also saw this bird
(or birds?) and sketched it for the Crocker Gallery drawing, then used these images as the
basis for dodos in his later paintings.33
Subsequent illustrations of dodos, from Piso’s 1658 edition of Bontius’ encyclopaedia
onwards (Strickland and Melville, 1848), almost all derive from Savery’s stock image.34Apart
from the Hoefnagel, the only independent illustrations, all also early, are those of Clusius in
1605, Van Warwyck’s expedition of 1598, the Gelderland sketches of 1602, van den Broecke
of 1617 (published 1646), Saftleven’s head (c. 1638) and Mansur’s wonderful painting (c.
1624) done from a live bird brought from Mauritius to Surat in India (all illustrated in Ziswiler,
1996; see also Hume, 2003).35 The aquarelle sketch by Cornelisz Saftleven (1607–1681) was
claimed as a white dodo by Oudemans (1917, 1918) and Renshaw (1938).36 However the
67WHITE DODO OF RÉUNION – UNRAVELLING A MYTH
Figure 7. Roelant Savery’s sketch of three dodos (from Ziswiler, 1996: 48). © The Natural History Museum, London;
reproduced by permission.
Figure 8. Engraving by Salomon Savery used to illustrate Bontekoe
(1646). This image appears in only one version of Bontekoe’s travels
(Zaagman [c. 1647–1648]: 5). © The Natural History Museum, London;
reproduced by permission.
68 WHITE DODO OF RÉUNION – UNRAVELLING A MYTH
head and neck are dark, and the pale shoulders are simply so because the artist left them in
outline. This rather lively bird (illustrated in Fuller, 1987, 2001, 2002; Ziswiler, 1996) may
have been painted from life – one indication is the lack of conspicuous nostrils. Comparing
images of stuffed birds (Savery’s ‘stock’ dodo, Hoefnagel’s painting) and the extant head in
Oxford with live or freshly dead ones (the Gelderland sketches, Mansur’s painting and the
Crocker Gallery drawing), it appears that the large nostrils were inconspicuous slits in life,
but that once dried, the skin contracted to create a large gaping orifi ce.
Apart from the single Prague specimen depicted in Savery’s 1611 painting and listed in
the inventory of the imperial collection, all coloured images of dodos from life or specimens
are grey (later Savery, Saftleven) or blackish (Hoefnagel, Mansur), and all written descriptions
the same (Hachisuka, 1953; Wissen, 1995; Ziswiler, 1996). The whitish bird must therefore
have been an anomalous, albinistic specimen, and may have been singled out by its collector
for that reason. Had the dodo been a familiar bird, paintings of an albino would have rapidly
been recognised as such, but it is perhaps understandable that, given the accounts of large
white birds in Réunion, and the existence of the paintings of white dodos, the two should
have been merged to create a chimera that is found in almost every book on extinctions.
However had Strickland still been alive when the Dutch paintings emerged, we have no
doubt a more critical view would have prevailed, and a great deal of spurious speculation
would have been avoided.37
A GEOLOGICAL IMPEDIMENT
Finally there are sound geological reasons for believing that no dodo could have reached
Réunion. Mauritius (Saddul, 1995) and Rodrigues (Giorgi and Borchiellini, 1998) are volcanic
islands eight to ten million years old, whereas Réunion is at most three million years old
(Montaggioni and Nativel, 1988). After fi ve or more million years of evolution on the two
older islands, it is unlikely that either the dodo or the Rodrigues solitaire would have been
capable of fl ying to the newly emergent Réunion once it became habitable. Much of Réunion’s
fauna and fl ora derive from the pre-existing biota of Mauritius, at 164 kilometres to the
northeast by far the nearest land, but it completely lacked the fl ightless or near-fl ightless
birds common to the other two islands: dodos and solitaires, large rails Aphanapteryx and
Erythromachus and large parrots Lophopsittacus and Necropsittacus.38 Only animals still
able to fl y well (other birds, bats), or to survive the sea crossing by current drift (tortoises,
lizards and snails on logs), were able to colonise.39 Among plants it can be seen that in many
genera (especially in Arecaceae (palms), Pandanaceae (screw-pines), Myrtaceae, Sapotaceae,
Ebenaceae) there has been substantial radiation in Mauritius, whereas there are only one or
two species in those genera in Réunion.40
CONCLUSION
We concur with Mourer (1995a, 1995b, 1999) that travellers’ accounts of large white quasi-
fl ightless birds in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Réunion are best referred to the
extinct form of sacred ibis discovered sub-fossil in 1974 (Mourer and Moutou, 1987). The
enigmatic paintings by Holsteyn and Withoos, depicting dodos with white plumage and yellow
wings, can now be traced to a single original by Roelant Savery, painted around 1611 in
69WHITE DODO OF RÉUNION – UNRAVELLING A MYTH
Prague. This image was based on a whitish stuffed specimen, originating in Mauritius, then
included in Emperor Rudolph II’s Kunsthammer (collection of curiosities) (Bauer and Haupt,
1976; Müllenmeister, 1988; Wissen, 1995). This bird, presumably albinistic and possibly
collected for that reason, seems to have been unique; all other reported dodos were grey
to blackish in colour, often with whitish primary feathers in the wing. There never was a
white dodo on Réunion, and it is likely that dodos in Mauritius had already lost the power
of fl ight before neighbouring Réunion emerged from the seabed.
POSTSCRIPT
After this paper was submitted for publication, two books about the dodo with pertinent
material were published (Hengst, 2003; Pinto-Correia, 2003); neither alters the principal
argument and conclusions we offer, but some side issues require comment. Hengst
concentrated on dodo iconography; Pinto-Correia’s book, only sparsely illustrated, has a
chapter on Savery’s life and dodo sources. We have also come across another paper drawing
attention to Savery’s white dodo (Valledor de Lozoya, 2002); the author’s conclusions are
similar to those presented here – that Savery’s bird was an albinistic Mauritian dodo. However
Valledor de Lozoya discussed the supposed Réunion white dodo in much less detail (while
agreeing that it arose from over-enthusiastic nineteenth century “dodophily”), and he did not
directly connect the Savery image with the later Holsteyn and Withoos paintings.
The paintings reproduced by Hengst include, in colour, the Berlin “Orpheus” (M204)
(Hengst, 2003: 57), principal subject of this paper, and also, in monochrome, the Christies/
Salle Leys canvas33 (Hengst, 2003: 64) and another similar one, “Landscape with exotic
birds” (Hengst, 2003: 64), with only a single dodo which is a version of the left-hand bird
in the Crocker Gallery sketch (Figure 7). This second painting, not previously reproduced,
was sold by S. Nystad of Lochem in 1959; its present whereabouts is unknown. It can now
be seen that it, not the Christies/Salle Leys painting, was the model for Hartlaub’s (1877)
frontispiece, and it is thus the ‘lost’ Seiffer painting, and almost certainly Müllenmeister’s
(1988) equally ‘lost’ M157 (“Waterbirds and a dodo by a small waterfall”). The Christies/
Salle Leys picture, with a much larger waterfall and an apparently coastal rocky landscape,
glossed “Landscape with exotic birds and three dodo’s [sic]” by Hengst (2003: 64), is likely
to be the painting called “Waterbirds by a rocky coast” listed by Müllenmeister (1988: 130)
as containing a dodo, but excluded from his catalogue as being partly painted by Savery’s
nephew Hans (= Jan). Hans Savery is accepted as the painter of a large dodo image kept
by Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History (Wissen, 1995: cover). Hengst (2003:
60–61) also reproduced the Reims “Noah” (M250) in colour.
While Pinto-Correia (2003) promotes the Réunion white dodo as real, Hengst shares our
opinion that the Holsteyn and Withoos white dodos have no link to Réunion, though he, like
Valledor de Lozoya, did not make the connection with Savery’s white Mauritian dodo in the
Berlin “Orpheus”. Both authors, however, followed Spicer41 in dating the Crocker Gallery
sketch not to circa 1626 but to Savery’s time in Prague (pre-1613), though they differed
on whether the dodo was alive or dead when the sketch was made. If correct, this early
date would make it diffi cult to explain the transition from the ‘stock’ dodos of his earlier
paintings to the lively ones of his later years. Pinto-Correia (2003) emphasized Savery’s
frequent re-use of the same images in paintings throughout his career, but failed to explain
the different dodo styles and even claimed that the fat, static ‘stock’ dodo was derived from
70 WHITE DODO OF RÉUNION – UNRAVELLING A MYTH
the Crocker sketch. Müllenmeister (1985: 202) also hinted that he favoured the earlier date
for the sketch, but there is nothing substantive to go on (Friedmann, 1956; Besselink, 1995).
The sketch is uniform in style with others, equally undated, depicting elephants (Eeckhout,
1954; Pinto-Correia, 2003) and eagles (Müllenmeister, 1985), which Spicer41, Hengst (2003)
and Pinto-Correia (2003) argued must have been done in the Emperor’s Prague menagerie
or his museum rather than in Holland where the range of animals was poorer. Unknown to
Müllenmeister (1985) and Pinto-Correia (2003), Spicer (1984) later decided the drawings
were not done in Prague, but between 1616 and 1626 in Holland. To us, and to Friedmann
(1956), Besselinck (1995) and Pinto-Correia (contra Hengst), the lively birds in the sketch
imply a living model. If Savery had seen and sketched living dodos in Prague, we would
expect him to have used those sketches in his paintings from then onwards, not waited for
14 years, coincident with the known presence of a live dodo in Amsterdam, before branching
out with the different postures and feathering. There is no equivalent change in the depiction
of other exotic species in his late paintings, which implies to us that there was new input
specifi cally related to dodos. Hengst (2003), however (contra Müllenmeister, 1988; Pinto-
Correia, 2003, and this paper), dated all Savery’s dodo paintings to the period 1626–1628,
and attributed the palor of the Berlin “Orpheus” dodo to Savery’s distribution of highlights
in this particular work. Valledor de Lozoya (2002), who has examined the original painting,
pointed out that it is apparently dated by Savery himself to 1611 though the date is hard to
read. He was inclined to prefer Müllenmeister’s (1988) alternative dates of 1628 or 1631
on stylistic grounds, but conceded42 that there is another other similar Savery “Orpheus”
landscape with animals of an equally early date (1610, now in Frankfurt, M 203). Even if
the Berlin “Orpheus” was proved to date from the late 1620s, it nevertheless precedes the
Holsteyn and Withoos white dodos by several decades, and our principal argument stands.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would particularly like to thank Frances (“Effi e”) Warr (lately librarian at the Rothschild Library, The Natural
History Museum, Tring) for her invaluable comments, and bringing to our attention the correspondence in the
archives relating to the Holsteyn and Withoos paintings. We would also like to thank David Loydell, Mike Barker,
Michael P. Walters, Robert Prys-Jones, H. Glyn Young, and Cécile Mourer-Chauviré for helpful and important
critical comments in the preparation of this paper; also Dr R. Prys-Jones and Ann Datta (General and Photographic
Libraries, The Natural History Museum, London) for facilitating permission to reproduce the Museum’s white dodos
by Holsteyn and Withoos. Elke Swichtenberg (Bildarchiv Preussicher Kulturbesitz) kindly gave us permission to
reproduce the 1611 Savery “Landscape with Orpheus ...” in Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. We thank
Marjolein Menalda and Marijke Besselink (Teyler’s Museum, Haarlem) for references to the historical information
about the Holsteyns, and Margaret Wafelbakker (Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam), for information
about Cornelis Saftleven. We would also like to thank Michael Keith Hume for assistance in the translation of
Dutch text, and the staff of the Bodleian Library and Ashmolean Museum (Sackler Library) for all manner of small
mercies. Pierre Brial contributed a most helpful appraisal of the fi rst draft of this paper, and Linda Birch (Alexander
Library, Edward Grey Institute, Oxford) was most helpful as ever. Errol Fuller, Francis Russell of Christie’s and
Marie-Hélène Montout-Richard (Musée de Beaux Arts, Reims) kindly provided images of, and references to, little
known paintings by Savery.
NOTES
1 “Daer waren oock eenige dod-eersen, die kleyne vleugels hadden, maer konden niet vliegen, waren soo vet datse
quallijck gaen konden, want als sie liepen, sleepte haer de neers langhs de aerde.” The exact date of Bontekoe’s
visit is not recorded in his book, except that it was between 31 May (when he passed the Cape) and 19 November
71WHITE DODO OF RÉUNION – UNRAVELLING A MYTH
(when he reached the Sunda Straits). P. Brial (to J. P. Hume, in litt., 28 October 2001), taking journey times into
account, suggested the visit was in August. As discussed (see p. 000) one early edition of Bontekoe’s travels (see
Figure 8) was illustrated with a dodo engraving derived from a Mauritian bird. Given that the Dutchman was
later shipwrecked and lost all his personal effects, and did not get back to Holland for seven years, he must have
written up his visit to Réunion from memory. It is quite likely that, having seen large quasi-fl ightless birds there,
he embellished their description from published accounts of dodos from Mauritius. The only previous Dutch visitor,
Adriaen Blok in 1612, made no mention of such birds (Brial, 2001).
2 The fullest description was from Dubois (1674), englished by Oliver (1897) as follows:
Solitaires. These birds are thus named because they always go alone. They are as big as a big Goose, and have
white plumage, black at the extremity of the wings and of the tail. At the tail there are some feathers resembling
those of the Ostrich. They have the neck long, and the beak formed like that of Woodcocks [“bécasses”], but
larger; the legs and feet like those of turkey-chicks [“poulets d’Inde”]. This bird betakes itself to running,
only fl ying but very little.
The last sentence is wrongly translated, the original reads “cet oiseau se prend à la course”, meaning “this bird is
taken [i.e. captured] by running after it” (as in hare-coursing). Dubois’ “bécasse” has always been translated into
English as woodcock (Scolopax rusticola), but oystercatcher (“becasse de mer”, Haematopus ostralegus) is an
equally probable gloss; both birds have long straight bills, but the oystercatcher’s is more robust.
Two accounts, Ruelle’s and the log of the Navarre, referred to “lourdes” (Lougnon, 1970; Cheke, 1987; P.
Brial to J. P. Hume, in litt., 28 October 2001), both in lists in which solitaires do not feature, so this may have
been another term for the same bird. Hébert (1999), however, argued that Ruelle intended “palombes” (pigeons),
and that a copyist unfamiliar with the word had rendered this “palourdes”.
3 Our translation. The solitaire supposed to have been sent to France from Réunion by Mahé de Labourdonnais
around 1640 (Billiard, 1822) would have been a Rodrigues solitaire (Pezophaps solitaria); the Réunion bird was by
then extinct (see Cheke, 1987). P. Brial (to J. P. Hume, in litt., 28 October 2001) considered this story of Billiard’s
doubtful, as there is no independent corroboration.
4 Duquesne’s (1689) tract contains a description of Réunion (the putative “île d’Eden”), which was plagiarised
directly from Dubois (1674), mildly paraphrased. It has been reprinted many times, most recently by Racault and
Carile (1995) (see also North-Coombes, 1991). Leguat’s book is dated 1708, but Racault (1995) has established
that it was released in October 1707.
The plan for a Huguenot colony on Réunion failed because, contrary to what Duquesne believed, the French
Compagnie des Indes still had a settlement there, so Leguat and his companions were instead deposited on Rodrigues,
an archetypal desert (i. e. uninhabited) island. His subsequent account was for long taken by literary historians
(though not naturalists) to be fi ction (e. g. Atkinson, 1922), but is now well-established through much independent
evidence as a factual account (North-Coombes, 1991; Racault, 1995).
5 Our translation; the original reads: “Le dronte parait propre et particulier aux îles de France et de Bourbon,
et probablement aux terres de ce continent qui en sont les moins eloignées; mais je ne sache pas qu’aucun voyageur
ait dit l’avoir vu ailleurs que dans ces deux îles.”
6 Buffon was widely read, but his sources were patchy, and crucially (and unexpectedly) he appears to have
overlooked most of the French literature on Réunion from the seventeenth century, apart from Carré and Flacourt
(Buffon, 1770–1783); the latter did not mention large quasi-fl ightless birds in his description of Réunion (Flacourt,
1661) (see Lougnon, 1970).
7 Lamouroux (1824: 2: 29), editing a reprint of Buffon’s works, wrote in a footnote to Buffon’s dodo article:
“Cuvier and other naturalists regard the existence of this bird as very doubtful” (our translation); this was before
Mauritian naturalist Julien Desjardins had sent Cuvier Rodrigues solitaire bones (Strickland and Melville, 1848).
Strickland (Strickland and Melville, 1848: 4–5), mentioning no names, wrote:
so rapid and so complete was their extinction that the vague descriptions given of them by early navigators were
long regarded as fabulous or exaggerated, and these birds, almost contemporaries of our great-grandfathers,
became associated in the minds of many persons with the Griffi n and the Phoenix of mythological antiquity.
Réné-Primevère Lesson was the principal detractor, trying to refute Duncan’s (1828) article (Hachisuka, 1953),
even though Duncan had a head and foot in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
8Apterornis was pre-occupied, so Schlegel’s generic name Ornithaptera was subsequently used (see discussion
in Hachisuka, 1953).
9 Newton backtracked later. In Dictionary of birds (Newton and Gadow, 1896: 217), he wrote that “though two
fi gures — one by Bontekoe (circa 1670 and another by Pierre Withoos (ob. 1693) have been thought to represent
72 WHITE DODO OF RÉUNION – UNRAVELLING A MYTH
it (Trans. Zool. Soc. vi p. 373 pl. 62 [Newton, 1867]) their identifi cation is but conjectural. Yet the existence of
the bird is undubitable”.
10 Newton (1867: 375) suggested that the rather blunt bill in the Withoos painting was evidence of a living
captive bird being the model:
The beak of the Dodo, as represented here, also demands a word of comment; instead of terminating in the
formidable dertrum to which we are accustomed in the pictures of the Saverys and Goeimare, its tip is rounded
off, as if it had undergone the operation known among falconers as ‘coping’. Now I cannot help thinking
that in this point we have grounds for believing that the subject of the Figure must have been a bird kept in
captivity. The Dodo was no doubt able with its powerfully hooked beak to infl ict very serious injury; and it
is not improbable (so it seems to me) that the keeper of such a bird would consult his own safety, and, by
trimming an offensive weapon so likely to be used against him, deprive it of the means of doing harm.
11 At the time of Coker’s discovery, John Gould, sometime Curator of birds in the museum of the Zoological
Society of London (Wheeler, 1997) was a world-famous ornithologist, and by 1866 Alfred Newton was Professor
of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at Cambridge University (Wollaston, 1921). Their views thus carried
considerable weight.
12 The Holsteyn white dodo in the Teyler’s Museum is not recorded before 1865, when J. L. van der Burch of
Haarlemerliede (or Spaarnwoude) gave it to A. van der Willigen Pz. of Haarlem. It was exhibited with other sketches
at the Academy of Haarlem in December 1865 (Millies, 1868; Renshaw, 1938; see also review of Millies’s paper
(Anonymous,1868, presumably by the editor, A. Newton). Miss C. A. van Willigen (the daughter ?) presented it
to the museum in 1916 (Plomp, 1997). The London version fi rst appeared in an Amsterdam sale in 1908 (Plomp,
1997) when it was bought by Dr Hans Wertheim and sold on to the British Museum (Natural History), London,
in 1937 (details in the archives of The Natural History Museum, London (anonymous contemporary typescript,
in the folder kept with the painting in The Natural History Museum, London, reference 88 O H); the acquisition
was noted by Kinnear (1937), Renshaw (1938) and Hachisuka (1953)). The third picture was owned by Baron
van der Feltz when Oudemans (1917) illustrated it, but is now missing; Plomp (1997) was unable to discover its
whereabouts. According to Jackson (1999) it is in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, though this appears to be an error
(M. Besselink to J. P. Hume, pers. comm., 11 February 2002).
13 The younger Pieter Holsteyn was a student of his father, a well-established glass painter and engraver; both
were prolifi c, based in Haarlem; the son also worked in Zwolle and Munster (Jackson, 1999; Dumas and Rijdt,
1994). They probably both used the initials “PH” and many works cannot be assigned with certainty to one or
the other (Plomp, 1997).
14 According to manuscript letters in the archives of The Natural History Museum, London (BMNH 1357/18),
the Withoos dodo is known to have been in the Dare family from at least the 1850s, but its earlier history is not
known. After Mr C. Dare’s death in June 1918, his son Walter C. Dare offered it (and another Withoos of wildfowl
without a dodo) to the British Museum (Natural History). An internal memorandum from S. F. Harmer to C. E.
Fagan (20 June 1918; BMNH 1357/18) suggested that its purchase would not be a priority for the museum, and
that perhaps Lord Rothschild would be interested, Fagan answering that he agreed that it should not be bought, and
asking Harmer to reply. Things moved quickly: a typed footnote on the original letter from W. C. Dare reads “This
picture was purchased by Lord Rothschild for his museum at Tring, June 28th, 1918” (BMNH 1357/18).
15 M. Besselink to J. P. Hume, pers. comm., 11 February 2002. Marijke Besselink is a curator at the Teyler’s
Museum, Haarlem, where one of the Holsteyn white dodos is kept. Rothschild was sometimes careless with detail, and
gave no source for his claim about the Withoos; he may have been referring to a Holsteyn image. See Cheke (1987:
34, 44, 47–49) for errors or extravagant claims pertaining to extinct Mascarene birds in Rothschild (1907).
16 Dubois (1674) expressly stated that the solitaire did not have a fat cycle: “All the birds of this island have
their season at different times, being six months in the fl at country and six months in the mountains, from whence
returning they are very fat and good to eat. I except the birds of the river and the Solitaires, the partridges [“perdrix”;
Turnix nigricollis] and the Blue-Birds [“oiseaux bleus”], which do not change” (translation by Oliver, 1897).
17 Hoefnagel’s paintings of a Mauritian dodo and a red hen (Aphanapteryx bonasia) are the oldest full-colour
pictures of these extinct species. They were painted around 1610, using stuffed specimens of birds that had lived
in the Emperor Rudolf II’s menagerie at Ebersdorf. Although often attributed to Georg (Joris) Hoefnagel, he died
in 1600 before any dodos could have reached Prague. According to Jackson (1999) the paintings were done by his
son Jakob, who was paid to paint the emperor’s collection in 1610.
18 This painting, owned by the Duke of Northumberland, and formerly exhibited at Syon House near London
(Broderip, 1853), is now attributed to Gillis de Hondecoeter (Ziswiler, 1996; Jackson, 1999) on the basis of a
73WHITE DODO OF RÉUNION – UNRAVELLING A MYTH
monogram previously misinterpreted (Geeraerts, 1982); it is now in Alnwick Castle (Ziswiler, 1996).
19 No bird remains were located in Réunion before 1974. The skull in Prague is from a Mauritian dodo (Strickland
and Melville, 1848; Wissen, 1995), possibly from the bird painted by Hoefnagel (see note 17). The skeletons in
Cambridge, still exhibited in the public gallery, are of a Mauritian dodo and a Rodrigues solitaire, reconstructed
from sub-fossil remains (personal observation by JPH and ASC, November 2000).
20 Marquis Masauji Hachisuka was an strongly anglophile member of the Japanese aristocracy – but the hypothetical
bird was named after King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, not after Queen Victoria (Hachisuka, 1937).
21 Tatton’s account is often referred to as by Castleton. Samuel Castleton was captain of the East Indiaman, the
Pearl, interloping on the East India Company’s claimed monopoly of trade with the Indies (Farrington, 1999). John
Tatton, ship’s master, wrote the account of the voyage (Purchas, 1905: 3).
22 Fat cycles are now known to have been a feature of Mascarene wildlife before the advent of man altered
the islands’ ecology. They occurred in tortoises, fl ying-foxes, pigeons, parrots and bulbuls (Hypsipetes as well as
dodos and Rodrigues solitaires (Cheke, 1987). Although Tatton (Purchas, 1905: 3) and Bellanger (Lougnon, 1970)
reported Réunion solitaires as fat, Dubois, who was on the island for 16 months, specifi cally excluded them from
his list of birds with a seasonal vertical migration and fat cycle (see note 16).
23 Although Edward Newton (1888), Alfred’s brother, called the Réunion bird Didus solitarius, he added a note
of caution: “not even a bone of this Dodo, nor any Figure of it which we can with certainty trust, remains to us
now, so far as anyone has been able to discover”.
24 Cheke’s (1987) discussion of the history of extinct Mascarene birds, had gone to press before the description
(Mourer and Moutou, 1987) of this ibis was published . In late 1987, after publication of the ibis diagnosis, Cheke
wrote to François Moutou to suggest that he and Cecile Mourer had at last found the enigmatic solitaire.
25 Number 204 in Müllenmeister’s Oeuvrekatalog (1988), kept in Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preussischer
Kulturbesitz. His catalogue numbers will in subsequent notes be designated as M204, etc. This painting had long
been known, and was included by Biedermann (1898) in his list of dodo paintings (no.10, then in Emden). He even
clearly stated that “die Dronte is fast ganz” (“the dodo is almost completely white”). Hachisuka (1953) also listed it,
but overlooked its unusual colouration. No reproduction has previously appeared in a natural history publication.
26 Müllenmeister (1988: 131) noted the connection between the 1611 “Landscape with Orpheus ...” and the entry
in the manuscript catalogue of the emperor’s collection, but did not comment further as presumably he did not
appreciate the signifi cance of the white colour of both the painted bird and the described specimen.
27 Hosteyn’s rounded upper mandible, copied by Withoos, caused Newton (1867) to suggest the original was a
captive bird with its bill fi led down to prevent damage to its keepers (see note 10 above).
28 The dodo sketch was purchased by Judge E. B. Crocker and his wife from Rudolf Weigel of Leipzig in the
1870s (Friedmann, 1956). Before that it was in the Rosey collection (Eeckhout, 1954), about which Friedmann
was unable to discover any information.
29 This painting was formerly attributed to Goeimare (full details are in note 18).
30 Jackson (1993) drew attention in the Vienna “Paradise” (M155) to a stylised vulture (“eagle” according to
Müllenmeister, 1988) with extended wings, evidently detached from its perch and placed in mid-air in the upper centre
of the picture. What she did not report was that this same ‘stock’ vulture was used in several other paintings, e.g.
the Pommersfelden “Orpheus” (M225) and the London “Paradise” (M158). ‘Stock’ pelicans, ostriches, cassowaries,
crowned cranes and several other species can be traced through Savery’s portfolio through the years.
31 The other early (pre-1626) ‘stock’ dodos are catalogued by Müllenmeister (1988) as M225 (“Orpheus”:
Schloss Weissenstein, Pommersfelden, date in doubt: c. 1615–1628), M206 (“Orpheus”: Mauritshius, The Hague,
1617), M250 (“Noah after the fl ood”: Musée des Beaux Arts, Reims, c. 1625), and M233 (“Paradise”: Staatlichen
Museen zu Berlin, 1626). There is another in The Natural History Museum, London, using the ‘stock’ dodo which
Müllenmeister did not list, but is generally accepted as by Roelant Savery and well-known as “Edwards’ Dodo”.
The dodo is the centrepiece fi lling the centre of the picture, surrounded by other birds in a restricted landscape
(Ziswiler, 1996: cover; Hachisuka, 1953: frontispiece (from a copy of the Savery by Keulemans)). This image
is the most copied version of the bird, and the basis for most familiar versions (e.g. Tenniel’s dodo in Alice in
Wonderland (Carroll, 1866)). A further “Savery”, listed by Ziswiler (1996), in The Natural History Museum, London,
is a copy (signed “E. M. P. K. 1879”) of Strickland and Melville’s (1848) frontispiece, which itself is a copy of
the dodo and Savery’s signature taken from the Berlin “Paradise” (M233). The Pommersfelden “Orpheus” (M225)
is dated variously by Müllenmeister as “before 1615” (1988: 304) and “1628” (1988: 359), and cited by Ziswiler
(1996) as “ c. 1625”; we think it must pre-date 1626. There is some variation in the dodos in these works. M206,
M233 and “Edwards’ Dodo” are in exactly the same stiff upright posture and virtually feather-by-feather identical,
74 WHITE DODO OF RÉUNION – UNRAVELLING A MYTH
while M250 (Reims) has the same bird (by the feathering) leaning forward peering into a stream. Müllenmeister’s
original plate (1988) cut the dodo off, but he remedied this in his supplement (Müllenmeister, 1991); the only
colour reproduction known to us is a postcard produced by the Reims museum. The Pommersfelden bird (M225)
is a little less rigid (but still upright) and is shown up to its ankles in water; it is so small that it is not even
visible in Müllenmeister’s monochrome reproduction, but is well illustrated in colour by Ziswiler (1996). Savery’s
associate Gillis de Hondecoeter (see Müllenmeister, 1985) also painted two very similar ‘stock’ dodos. One is in
the bottom right-hand corner of “Paradise landscape with animals”, illustrated by Müllenmeister (1985, cat. no.
85; cited as being in Müllenmeister’s own gallery in Solingen). This painting has not previously been noted in
the dodo literature. A different painting, then in Professor J. Stumpf’s collection in Berlin, with a similar dodo
(but different surroundings) was illustrated (detail only) by Oudemans (1917: plate 5, fi gure 9); he attributed it,
possibly wrongly, to Gillis’s son Gijsbert. The one cited by Oudemans was mentioned by Hachisuka (1953) and
reproduced in vignette by Ziswiler (1996: 29).
32 Savery was born 1576 in the Flemish town of Courtrai/Kortrijk, then in the throes of revolt against absentee
rule from Spain. Possibly because the southern provinces of The Netherlands (now part of Belgium) reverted to
Spanish rule in 1579, the Savery family emigrated to fi rst Haarlem then Amsterdam in the newly independent Dutch
Republic. He moved to Prague in the service of Emperor Rudolph II in 1605, remaining until the Emperor’s death
in 1612. In 1613 he returned briefl y to Holland, then travelled doing commissions in Prague, Salzburg and Munich
before returning to Holland in 1616. He settled in Utrecht in 1619, where he died in 1639 (Müllenmeister, 1985;
Eeckhout, 1954; Spicer, 2000; Moree, 1998).
33 These later, more lively paintings are Müllenmeister’s M158 (“Landscape with dodo and vulture”, Zoological
Society, London, c. 1626), M155 (“Landscape with birds”, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 1628) and a
painting formerly belonging to Dr Otto Seiffer (or Seyffer) in Stuttgart, but lost since it was auctioned after his
death in around 1892 (Biedermann, 1898; Hachisuka, 1953). A pencil copy by Theodore Heuglin was however
used to engrave the frontispiece and cover of Hartlaub’s (1877) book on Madagascar birds, so we know what the
dodo was doing – it was an enhanced version of the left-hand bird in the Crocker Gallery drawing (Friedmann,
1956). The Zoological Society’s “Landscape with dodo ...” (M158) has a re-worked version of the tiny central
bird in the Crocker drawing, the most lively of all Savery’s dodos. The Vienna “Landscape with birds” (M155)
has a unique pose; the dodo is shown looking down into water, quite differently feathered from the ‘stock’ birds
of Savery’s earlier period.
Finally a Savery painting with three dodos in it based on the Crocker drawing, “property of a noblewoman”,
which was sold by Christie’s in London during November 1979 (Christie’s, 1979; Geeraerts, 1982). This picture
was sold on again at Salle Leys in Antwerp in 1983 (Anonymous, 1986: colour illustration). Two of the dodos are
in the right foreground, one in front of the other, so the rear dodo’s feet are hidden by the one in front. The front
dodo is a direct copy of the right-hand bird in the Crocker drawing, while the one behind looks like the Hartlaub
version of the bird from the lost Seiffer picture. The copy however has feet, whereas they cannot be seen in the
Christie’s/Salle Leys painting – they could no doubt have been supplied by the copyist using the front bird. The
third dodo is half-hidden in the woods, top left, rear on, as in the centre bird in the Crocker sketch. It appears
from its composition that, despite having three dodos, this picture is “Waterbirds and a dodo by a small waterfall”
(M157), listed as missing by Müllenmeister (1988), and is probably also the lost Seiffer painting. It was bought in
1979 using a suspected pseudonym (F. Russell to A. S. Cheke, in litt., 4 March 2002), and after resale in 1983 its
current owner and whereabouts are not known (Anonymous, 1986). This painting was also reproduced by Fuller
(2002).
34 Hachisuka (1953) presented a series of pictures discovered by Killerman and Casey Wood, unconnected with
Savery, which (following Oudemans, 1917) he associated with his Réunion solitaire. Although all are similar,
none can with certainty be assigned to any known bird, nor have they any recorded geographical associations.
One, dated 1657, by Johann Walther (Albertina Collection, Vienna) seems to us to be a mirror-reversed copy of a
better-known “dodo” by Jan van Kessel, part of his “Continent of America” tableau (illustrated in Jackson, 1993:
94–95). Hachisuka (1953) listed the Kessel under Mauritian dodo pictures, but cautiously suggested it might
be a Réunion solitaire. Friedmann (1956) reported another Kessel dodo in the Prado, Madrid, but this one is a
bizarrely coloured version of van den Broecke’s engraving (illustrated in Ziswiler, 1996: 33). Kessel “sometimes
let his imagination take over from reality” (Jackson, 1993: 98) and we are not convinced the bird in “Continent
of America” is a dodo/solitaire at all.
35 Some of these also have derivatives. Hoefnagel’s bird was incorporated by Jan Breughel the elder into his
“Allegory of Air” of 1611(see Jackson, 1993; Ziswiler, 1996), and several of Thomas Herbert’s illustrations
concerning Mauritius for his famous travels (Herbert, 1634), including the dodo, were crudely plagiarised from an
engraving in the “Tweede boek”, or journal of van Neck and van Warwijck’s expedition of 1598 (reproduced in
Strickland and Melville, 1848: plate 2; Wissen, 1995: 16; Ziswiler, 1996: 7). The mid-eighteenth century artist Aert
75WHITE DODO OF RÉUNION – UNRAVELLING A MYTH
Schouman appears to us to have based the head of his dodo (illustrated in Friedmann, 1956: plate 5) on Safl teven’s
head, though Friedmann thought a painting by Kessel was the model.
36 Schultz (1978) is a standard guide to Saftleven’s life and work.
37 Strickland died in 1853, hit by a train while examining a geological exposure in a railway cutting (Baker
and Bayliss, 2002).
38 Réunion also has far fewer lizards than Mauritius (Arnold, 2000), and lacks snakes, the endemic Mauritian
boas (Bolyeridae) having also been unable to make the crossing.
39 STRAHM, W., 1993 The conservation and restoration of the fl ora of Mauritius and Rodrigues. Unpublished
doctoral thesis, University of Reading.
40 The biogeography of the Mascarene vertebrate fauna will be discussed in detail in a forthcoming book by
the present authors.
41 SPICER, J., 1979. The drawings of Roelandt Savery. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Yale University, New
Haven, Connecticut, USA.
42 A. Valledor de Lozoya to A. S. Cheke, pers. comm., 19 August 2003.
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Received: 22 February 2002. Accepted: 24 February 2003. Electronic version released February 2004.
