An Italianate garden with a turkey cock, a cockerel and other exotic fowl

Born in Utrecht, Hondecoeter trained under his uncle, Jan Baptist Weenix, and was admitted into the Hague Painter's confraternity, Picturem, in 1659, only a year after completing his earliest recorded work (Dog Defending Dead Game Against a Bird of Prey, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Le Havre). By 1663, Hondecoeter was established in Amsterdam, where he achieved considerable success as a specialist of farmyard and allegorical scenes in which birds are the main protagonists. Few of his documented commissions are known today, but among those are paintings commissioned for the Stadholder William III for his pleasure palaces at Soetdijk and Het Loo.

The present picture illustrates Hondecoeter's ability to imbue his birds with characteristics and postures typical of each species and his observation of their impressive plumage. It would seem that Hondecoeter did not make preparatory drawings for his compositions, his practice of sketching birds in oil (first known to us through the inventory of his studio at the time of his death where fourteen such modelli are listed), today is known only from a canvas with detailed studies of seventeen birds and a squirrel (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille).