His Early Life

Melchior d’Hondecoeter (1636-1695) was the grandson of Gilles and the son of Gijsbrecht de Hondecoeter, all of whom were painters of animals and still lifes. Melchior d’Hondecoeter was born in Utrecht, The Netherlands in 1636. He was brought up in an artistic milieu and represents the fourth generation of a family of painters. Melchior’s aunt had been married to an Italianist painter Jan Baptist Weenix. After studying with his father, Melchior was apprenticed to his uncle Weenix and this helped him to develop his technique and use of colour. Besides strikingly realistic scenes of birds, he also painted wall hangings with views of buildings and parks. In many of these works also, birds had a role to play. He became a famous Baroque painter of the Dutch school who specialized in bird studies.

He Moved to Amsterdam

After the start of his painting career, he painted virtually exclusively bird subjects, usually exotic or game, in park-like landscapes. His paintings featured geese, partridges, pigeons, ducks, magpies and peacocks. He also painted African grey crowned cranes, Asian sarus cranes, Indonesian yellow-crested cockatoos and other birds normally found in Indonesia and Madagascar. In 1659, he became a member of a painters’ academy in the Hague. In 1663, Melchior married Susanne Tradel from Amsterdam and moved to that place. As per the historians, Hondecoeter’s wife was allowing her sisters to live with her in her house and Hondecoeter spent much of his time in his garden or drinking in the tavern in the Jordaan. He was often surrounded by art dealers and various painters. Hondecoeter later moved to a house on Leliegracht. When his wife died in 1692, he went to live in his daughter’s house in the Warmoesstraat. He left his daughter with substantial debt.

Painting Birds as Living Beings

Hondecoeter began his career with a different speciality from that for which he is presently famous. According to historians, he initially produced sea pieces. One of his earliest works is ‘Tub with Fish’ made in 1655. Soon after, Hondecoeter changed his style and abandoned ‘fish’ for ‘fowl’. He painted birds as living beings with passions, joys, fears and quarrels and not as a stock of a poulterer’s shop. According to an expert, ‘Hondecoeter displays the maternity of the hen with as much tenderness and feeling as Raphael did with his works on the maternity of Madonnas’.

Hondecoeter is especially renowned for his pictures of birds fighting and in-fight, such as ‘The Fight Between a Cock and a Turkey’. Some of his pictures are signed, though not dated. Among those with dates are ‘Jackdaw Deprived of His Borrowed Plumage’, ‘Game and Poultry’, and ‘A Park with Poultry’. Hondecoeter painted his birds by giving the motion of the birds’ spirit and accuracy and his style won him an international reputation for his brightly coloured canvases. Hondecoeter received favours in large measures from the magnates of the Netherlands.

Melchior d’Hondecoeter’s well-known paintings

The well-known paintings of Melchior d’Hondecoeter include ‘A Cock and Two Hens, with Chicks in a Landscape Setting’ (1656-95), ‘Birds, Butterflies and Frog with Plants and Fungi’, (1668), ‘Backyard Birds’, (1660), ‘Animals and Plants of the Forest’, (1670-80), ‘Chickens and Ducks’, (1660-90), ‘Concert of Birds’, (1670), ‘Beast in Front of Noah’s Ark’, (1680), ‘Fox with Dead Rooster and Poultry’, (1678), ‘Poultry Farm’, (1675-99), ‘The Crow Exposed’, (1680), ‘Pelican and other Birds Near a Pool’, ‘The Floating Feather’ (1680), ‘The Poultry Yard’, (1690s), ‘Roosters Fighting’, (1686), ‘Ducks’, (1675-80), ‘Still Life with Animals’, (1680-90), ‘A Diana Monkey with Four Colourful Birds’, (1690), ‘Girl with Peacocks’, (1680), ‘Peacocks, Male and Female’ (1681), ‘Cockatoo and Monkey by a Wicker Basket of Fruit’, ‘Peacocks’ (1683), ‘A Hunter’s bag near a Tree Stump’, ‘The Menagerie’, ‘A Hunter’s Bag on a Terrace’, ‘Birds in a Park’, ‘A Hen with Peacocks and a Turkey’, ‘Seven Chicks’,