A blue-and-yellow macaw on a perch, a dog and a monkey with fruit in a garden landscape

Melchior d’Hondecoeter was the preeminent bird painter active in the Dutch Golden Age. The present painting is a characteristic example of his work, in which exotic birds and other animals are staged within lush courtyards and garden settings. Such subjects had previously been treated by both Melchior’s father, Gijsbert Gillisz. de Hondecoeter, and his uncle, Jan Baptist Weenix, with whom Melchior successively trained. Melchior’s works, however, are imbued with a heightened courtly sensibility that betrays the further influence of the Flemish painter Frans Snyders. Hondecoeter’s paintings were avidly acquired by Amsterdam’s patrician elite – often to be installed within the spacious interiors of their country estates, some of which had actual menageries – and were so prized by subsequent collectors that in the 19th century the artist famously was given the moniker ‘Raphael of bird painters’.
The large blue-and-yellow macaw that appears on a perch at upper right seems to have been a favored motif in Hondecoeter’s works of the 1680s. The same bird features in several additional paintings, including works that are today in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (fig. 1); Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna (see R. Trnek, Die holländischen Gemälde des 17. Jahrhunderts in der Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste in Wien, Vienna, 1992, no. 78, illustrated); and another sold Christie’s, London, 6 July 2010, lot 17 (£121,250).