Melchior de Hondecoeter

Acquired by the grandfather of the present owner circa 1850;
Thence by direct family descent.

The following condition report has been provided by Hamish Dewar, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. Structural Condition The canvas has an old lining which is still providing a generally stable support. There are some vertical lines of craquelure running down from the upper horizontal framing edge, and what would appear to be a repaired tear in the lower right of the sky. The fracture lines are slightly raised and do require some consolidation. There is also a horizontal join in the canvas which runs across the paint surface just above the flying kingfisher. Paint Surface The paint surface has a very discoloured varnish layer as well as a number of discoloured retouchings which are visible in natural light as well as under ultra-violet light. Many of these are thin glazes which would have been applied in oil and have subsequently discoloured. I am confident that should these be removed, many would be found to be very excessive and largely unnecessary. The most significant of these extensive retouchings are: 1) an area in the clouds in the upper left of the composition, just beneath the upper horizontal framing edge, which measure approximately 20 x 8 cm, 2) retouchings along the horizontal join in the canvas mentioned above, 3) retouchings in the surrounding leaves and clouds, 4) a vertical line in the lower right of the composition, which runs up from the lower horizontal framing edge, and is approximatley 60 cm in length, 5) retouchings along and just above the lower horizontal framing edge, and 6) retouching along the fracture lines mentioned above in the lower right of the clouds. These do not fluoresce clearly under ultra-violet light and there may be other retouchings beneath the old discoloured varnish layers. Summary The painting therefore appears to be in reasonably good condition, and having been restored many years ago with rather crude and excessive retouchings and should respond well to cleaning, restoration and revarnishing. While a considerable amount of work would be involved, I would be confident that the end result would be very good.
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Melchior d'Hondecoeter began his career as a pupil of his father, the landscape and bird painter Gysbert d'Hondecoeter and later moved to the studio of his uncle, Jan Baptist Weenix.  He began work in The Hague but by 1663 had settled in Amsterdam where his large-scale paintings of birds and still lifes became immensely popular amongst the wealthy Amsterdam burghers.

This monumental work is one of the most dynamic examples of the artist's mature style.  Upright paintings by Hondecoeter of this size and quality are rare as the artist usually favoured a horizontal format, and the present work is the finest example to come to the market in at least the last 20 years. 

Hondecoeter followed in the tradition of the great Flemish still-life painter, Frans Snyders, whose work he is known to have collected.  This admiration can be clearly seen in the coherent compositional structuring of the present painting.  From the late 1660s Hondecoeter developed a favoured compositional format in which he divided the picture plane into three separate spaces.  Here the foreground is occupied by an array of closely observed birds, the middle ground is occupied by a stone wall that acts as a blocking device to the background which only opens up to the right where an elegant parkland vista can be glimpsed beyond.  Many of his best works from this period repeat this format; see, for example, the Birds and Spaniel in a Garden in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Buckingham Palace.¹ 

Hondecoeter did not make preparatory drawings for his paintings but instead had oil sketches of different birds and groups of birds that he kept in his studio and reused in different compositions.  For example the jay perched on the stone ledge (centre left; fig. 1) is repeated perched on a twig in the upper right of a painting sold in these Rooms on 16 May 1962, lot 16.  It is a testament to Hondecoeter's skill as an artist that although he used the same compositional format and motifs repeatedly, each of his paintings stands alone as an independently envisaged work.

Through careful division of the picture plane, the confident rendering of the birds which he dedicated his career to perfecting, and by the choice of a parkland setting, Hondecoeter here presents a composition where the normally mundane scene of the farmyard is elevated and imbued with an almost classical elegance.

1. See C. White, The Dutch Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Cambridge 1982, p. 51, no. 69, reproduced plate 56.