Lot 92: Melchior d'Hondecoeter (Utrecht 1636-1695 Amsterdam)

A pelican, a crowned crane, a cassowary, a flamingo, a leadbetter's cockatoo, a shelduck, a grebe, a red-breasted goose, a wigeon, a muscovy duck, a chough, an egyptian goose, a guinea fowl and a black curaçao at a pool in a park
signed 'M d Hondeco.ter'
oil on canvas
60 x 74 in. (152.4 x 188 cm.)

Arthur Heywood Brooksbank, perhaps acquired by his father, circa 1855/60, of Middleton Hall, near Beverley, Yorkshire, England and by descent to Percy Arthur Brooksbank (died circa 1952).
Private collection, Los Angeles; Christie's, New York, 12 June 1981, lot 282 (\$290,000).
Mrs. Barbara Piasecka Johnson, Princeton, New Jersey; Christie's, London, 9 July 1993, lot 10 (£331,500=\$498,751).

THE PROPERTY OF A LADY

Melchior d'Hondecoeter (born in Utrecht in 1636) came from a highly artistic family. His grandfather Gillis was a landscapist, and his father Gijsbert a celebrated bird painter (particularly waterfowl and poultry). He studied under his father until the latter's death in 1653, and then entered the Utrecht studio of his uncle, Jan Baptist Weenix whose oeuvre included many paintings of birds. Hondecoeter subsequently based himself in Amsterdam, and became the pre-eminent specialist of this branch of painting

Large-scale decorative game-pieces were popular amongst wealthy Amsterdam merchants to adorn the walls of their town houses and country mansions. In this particular work we see a pelican, a crowned crane, a cassowary, a flamingo, a leadbetter's cockatoo, a shelduck, a grebe, a red-breasted goose, a wigeon, a muscovy duck, a chough, an egyptian goose, a guinea fowl, and a black curaçao at a pool in the park.

Hondecoeter's mature style owes much to Frans Snyders, the important Flemish animal and still-life painter of a generation earlier, whose work he collected. From him, Hondecoeter borrowed a compositional formula that he used consistently from the late 1660s: birds and animals seen close up in the centre of the canvas, others entering from the left or right, their bodies sometimes cropped by the frame, the middle ground blocked by a wall, fence, tree or architectural ruins across one half of the canvas, the remaining side opening to a distant vista.

In this typical composition the birds are painted with such minute attention that they become portraits. Their three-dimensional presence is accentuated by the textural quality of their feathers, notably those of the pelican (considered then a rare species) which look unnaturally soft and full. The four large birds in the left part of the composition, the grebe, the red-breasted goose, the wigeon and the floating feather as well as the head of the muscovy duck on the right, recur in Hondecoeter's famous smaller upright picture in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, known as The Floating Feather. Indeed the artist habitually repeated entire passages from one painting to another and often made copies of compositions with only minor variations.

The landscape, as was always the case with Hondecoeter, is a secondary consideration, serving merely as a backdrop to the 'portraits' of the birds. It is however indicative of contemporary taste, especially the Italianate features of the arch and statues dotted throughout the park.
Hondecoeter belongs to the great age of Dutch painting. This excellent work is a perfect example of why he remained highly popular long after his death in 1695; in the 19th Century he was known as the 'Raphael of bird painters'.