Follower of Melchior d'Hondecoeter

Mount Juliet, Thomaston, Country Kilkenny, Ireland;
Amsterdam, Mak Van Waay, 16 October 1951, lot 31 (as Hondecoeter);
New York, Sotheby’s, 6 June 1985, lot 81 (as Hondecoeter and Studio);
With Oscar & Peter Johnson Ltd., London (as Hondecoeter and Studio);
There acquired by the late collector, 8 April 1986. 

During the 19th century, Melchior d'Hondecoeter was often called the "Raphael of bird painters," and indeed throughout his career, Hondecoeter maintained a narrow focus on the representation of birds, initially in dead game pieces, and later in his career in depictions of live birds, sometimes exotic species, in landscapes. Much of Hondecoeter's style was indebted to that of the great Flemish animal painter Frans Snyders, whose idiom and themes he embellished to suit the tastes of the wealthy patrician classes in Amsterdam. Hondecoeter's birds are painted on the scale of life and in true relation to each other, freely combining both familiar avians and more exotic species, one of the main reasons for their immediacy and decorative impact. The other is the extraordinary characterization and liveliness that Hondecoeter brought to his assembled feathered casts, as they act out their dramas in their garden settings.

The prime version of this composition was sold at Christie's New York, 26 January 2011, lot 25.