Mr. Georges, Paris;
Edouard Warneck collection, Paris;
His sale, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 26-27 May 1926, lot 50;
With S. Nystad, The Hague, by 1968
There acquired by a private New York collector;
By whom anonymously sold, New York, Sotheby's, 12 January 1989, lot 107;
There acquired. 

This elegant hunting still life likely dates to Hondecoeter's early years, while he was still in Amsterdam.  When Melchior's father, Gijsbert Hondecoeter, died in 1653, Melchior entered the studio and household of his uncle, Jan Baptist Weenix.  The compositional arrangement reflects Jan Baptist Weenix's paintings of the 1650s, most notably Weenix's 1652 Hunting Booty with a Swan, in the Bayerischen State Collection, Munich.  Hondecoeter employed the same pyramidal structure used by Weenix in many of his early hunting still lifes; the use of a classical landscape in the background is also inspired by the elder artist's Italianate pictures.   By the late 1660s, Hondecoeter would shift to painting scenes of live birds and animals almost exclusively.