Melchior d'Hondecoeter

Melchior de Hondecoeter Melchior d' Hondecoeter (* 1636 in Utrecht, † April 3, 1695 in Amsterdam) was a Dutch painter of animals.

Life and work

Melchior de Hondecoeter comes from the Dutch family of painters Hondecoeter, was a pupil of his father Gijsbert Gillisz. de Hondecoeter ( masters in the painters' guild in Utrecht) and his uncle Jan Baptist Weenix. His grandfather, Gillis Claesz. de Hondecoeter and his cousin January Weenix were painters.

He held on to 1659-1663 in The Hague, where he was a member and chairman of the painters' guild. Then he settled in Amsterdam, where he married in 1663 Susanna Tradel.

Hondecoeter painted hunting still life as well as compilations of native and exotic birds. Among the topics are eg chicken farms with fighting cocks or ducks on the water.

The format of the images is very variable, ranging from small paintings to large wall panels.

Although Hondecoeter signed almost all his works, only a very small part of his pictures is also dated. This circumstance makes a chronological order of the overall work problematic and almost impossible. Furthermore, it is provable that were replaced on animal pictures by contemporaries, for example, by Jacobus Victor (1640-1705), the original signatures by those of better-known Hondecoeter.

The representations are characterized by a large detailed realism. It is well established that Hondecoeter painted the birds by nature. The exotic birds he could see in zoos (called menageries ) of his clients and sponsors.

His most famous painting is the The floating spring known as the painting that a pond with water birds - including a large pelican in the foreground - shows. This image is in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, along with other images Hondecoeter.