Melchior de Hondecoeter

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 8 December 1965, lot 76, for £2,600 to Spiller;

With W.H. Patterson, London, December 1999;

With Richard Green, London;

Acquired from the above by the present owner.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's: This painting has a firm comparatively old lining with a strong older English stretcher. There is a light superficial sprinkling of old mould spots behind, but no sign that this has affected the lining. The very fine even craquelure throughout, and the settled, undisturbed light patina suggest that the painting has had a peaceful, secure early life. A fine film of earlier varnish enriches the deeper tones for instance of the Peacock himself, and much of the beautifully preserved brushwork and detail in the lower half of the painting. Rather more recent cleaning can be seen in the sky, with some strengthening up the upper left edge and slight unevenness perhaps in the glazing of the deep purple cloud. A narrow line, probably a scratch, about six inches long has been retouched below the wings of the dove, and there is some strengthening between the bright feathers of its breast. Pentimenti around its head may have been lightly muted. One or two minor small retouches can be seen under ultra violet light near the centre of the top edge, with a few other occasional minor little streaks of retouching in the background. To the right of the neck of the Peacock the warm reddish wall behind has a rather wider patch of surface retouching, and there is a narrow horizontal line in the blue feathers of its neck. One small more recent scrape is visible to the naked eye on the moulded border of the fountain at lower centre. These are surprisingly few and quite minimal imperfections, especially in such a large canvas. Above all the fine unworn quality of the paint surface has been exceptionally well preserved. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

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. Here he was able to supply large paintings for the decoration of the town houses and country mansions of the rich burger class, whose taste for the exotic had been whetted by the opening of the famous Menagerie in the Kloveniersburgwal in 1675. 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, freely combining both familiar avians and more exotic species (such as the hoopoe shown here) and this is one of the main reasons for their immediacy and decorative impact. The other is the extraordinary characterisation and liveliness that Hondecoeter brought to his assembled feathered casts, as they act out their dramas in their garden settings. Here we see a fleeing pigeon announcing the arrival of a bird of prey. Both the peacock and the cockerel sound the alarm. The snowy mother hen fusses and panics and calls her chicks to shelter under her wings, while the peahen, too intent it seems on preening her feathers, remains oblivious to the impending danger. Hondecoeter made no preparatory drawings, instead recording birds and animals from life in oils, which enabled him to re-use them in different compositions. The Hoopoe here, for example, recurs in the Birds in a park of 1686 today in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.²

An unusual feature of the present canvas is the presence on the fountain of the VOC monogram of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie), strongly suggesting that the painting was commissioned by one of its members. The letter above the monogram itself refers to one of the Company's six cities or kamers in which it was based. It may be read as an 'H'  for Hoorn, or perhaps an 'R' for Rotterdam, and the patron would no doubt have been drawn from the ranks of the Company's Directors or bewindhebbers . Unfortunately, apart from the Stadtholder Willem III, for whom he worked at his residences at Honslaardijk, Soestdijk and Het Loo, Hondecoeter's patrons are rarely identifiable. Such a reference appears to be unique in his work, but bears witness to the wealthy mercantile class from which he must have drawn much of his clientele.

We are grateful to Fred G. Meijer of the RKD in The Hague for confirming the attribution on the basis of photographs.

 

1. Gustav Henrik Vilhelm Upmark, Die Architektur der Renaissance in Schweden, 1530-1760, 1900, p. 125.

2. Inv. A2325. Exhibited Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Melchior d'Hondecoeter 1636-1695, 18 September 2010 - 2 January 2011, no. 38.