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拍品专文
Melchior d’Hondecoeter was the leading bird painter during the Dutch Golden Age, a fact which earned him the moniker the ‘Raphael of bird painters’ in the nineteenth century. Here, three hens, a rooster, ducks and ducklings populate the foreground of a courtyard or lush garden setting. Despite the humble nature of the fowl, the high status of the environment is alluded to by the pair of peacocks, turkey – a rare import from the New World – and Palladian structure in the background. Hondecoeter’s visual vocabulary developed in the studios of his father, Gijsbert Gillisz. de Hondecoeter, and uncle, Jan Baptist Weenix, but his works are equally informed by the grander still lifes of the Antwerp artist Frans Snyders.
Such paintings were avidly acquired by Amsterdam’s patrician elite, who frequently installed them within the spacious interiors of their country estates, some of which contained actual menageries on their grounds. Hondecoeter developed such works through ad vivum drawings and oil sketches of birds captured in various poses which were often repurposed in multiple compositions. Though their plumage differs, the five chicks in the lower foreground all derive from an oil sketch of ten chicks sold Koller, Zurich, 20 March 1997, lot 26 (a comparable sketch is at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. no. SK-A-5023; fig. 1). The standing chick seen from behind also appears in a red chalk drawing in a second work at the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. RP-T-1960-82(V)), and the standing duck at lower left can be found in paintings like one sold Sotheby’s, New York, 20 May 2021, lot 35.
Such paintings were avidly acquired by Amsterdam’s patrician elite, who frequently installed them within the spacious interiors of their country estates, some of which contained actual menageries on their grounds. Hondecoeter developed such works through ad vivum drawings and oil sketches of birds captured in various poses which were often repurposed in multiple compositions. Though their plumage differs, the five chicks in the lower foreground all derive from an oil sketch of ten chicks sold Koller, Zurich, 20 March 1997, lot 26 (a comparable sketch is at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. no. SK-A-5023; fig. 1). The standing chick seen from behind also appears in a red chalk drawing in a second work at the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. RP-T-1960-82(V)), and the standing duck at lower left can be found in paintings like one sold Sotheby’s, New York, 20 May 2021, lot 35.