Farmyard friends

After Verboeckhoven received his first artistic training from his father - the sculptor Barthélemy Verboeckhoven - he went to the Academy in Ghent and later became a student in the studio of the livestock-painter Balthasar P. Ommeganck (1755-1826). Influenced by the latter, Verboeckhoven soon specialised in painting landscapes with livestock. His work was enormously succesfull right from the start. For example, a picture depicting cattle exhibited in 1824 was bought by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in that same year. Verboeckhoven's star kept rising as in 1833 he was appointed Chevalier de l'Ordre de Leopold and in 1834 he received a gold medal at Lille. He soon became one of the most important teachers of the nineteenth century and was frequently asked to add his staffage to the paintings of, amongst others, his brother the well-known seascape painter Louis Verboeckhoven, J.B. de Jonghe, P. de Noter, B.C. Koekkoek and J.B. Klombeck.
The Dutch collector Lambertus Vincentius Ledeboer Bz. commisioned the present lot in 1847 when Verboeckhoven enjoyed international acclaim. It is noteworthy that Ledeboer knew precisely what he wanted as he sent all the animals portrayed in the painting to the artist's studio in Belgium. In the catalogue of the Ledeboer collection by M. Wijt the picture was described as follows: "Dit schilderijtje is zijnen oorsprong daaraan verschuldigd, dat de eigenaar [Mr L.V. Ledeboer Bz.] de meeste daarop geschilderde gedierten aan den schilder ten geschenke toezond en daaronder twee groote Kaapsche eenden, een 'goudlakenschen haan' met vijf kippen, twee marmotjes en konijnen, eene dijf en een vogeltje, alles op een boerenerf, waarop men regts een 'hooiberg' ziet en links in het verschiet een 'dorpstoren.'" (Rotterdam, 1876, p. 50, no. 150).