Melchior de Hondecoeter

Philip Riddell, 1975;
With the Leger Galleries, London, by 1975;
Acquired from the above after 1980.

London, The Leger Galleries, Exhibition of Old Master Paintings, April 1976, cat. no. 11.

Apollo Magazine, September 1975.

The canvas has an old relining. The paint surface has been slightly pressed through the relining, but is in good overall condition. Inspection under ultraviolet light shows an uneven varnish, and very few small scattered retouchings. There is also a repair to a circa 6 cm. horizontal tear lower left corner. Offered in a carved and gilt wood frame, with some minor knocks, but structurally sound.
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Melchior d'Hondecoeter was trained by his father Gijsbert and his uncle Jan Baptist Weenix. From them he took up the tradition of farmyard and park scenes and brought it to a hitherto unknown level of technical perfection and elegance. Although he began his career in The Hague, Hondecoeter's magnificent paintings of live birds such as this all date from after he had married and settled in Amsterdam in 1663.  The Swedish architect Nicodemus Tessin the Younger (1654-1728), visiting Amsterdam, summed it up thus; 'D'Hondecoeter is the best painter for birds and the like, a civilised man, although young in years, who also showed me some very artful things. He has a very loose manner of painting which yet remains wonderfully true to life when seen from a distance. He always tries to paint animals which have the most singular colours...he paints all kinds of animals well, but birds the best'.¹

 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 patrican classes in Amsterdam. Hondecoeter's birds are painted on the scale of life and in true relation to each other, and his paintings are at once distinguished by the extraordinary characterisation of their inhabitants. 

We are grateful to Fred G. Meijer for endorsing the attribution to Hondecoeter on the basis of photographs, and for suggesting that this is probably the best of the known versions of this design. Hondecoeter habitually composed many of his works such as this upon descending diagonals, leading from right to left, and formed by birds sitting upon a fence or plinth such as here. Another good example, much copied, is in the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden. Another example of this composition, unsigned and with the same birds, but with considerable variations in the landscape background, was in the collection of the Earls of Aylesford at Packington Hall, Warwickshire. Two other versions, both possibly copies, are recorded; the first, reputedly signed, was in the collection of the Earls of Dunraven, Adare Manor, County Limerick, and the second, of slightly different dimensions, was in the collection of J.F. Minken in London in 1958.