Melchior d'Hondecoeter

Melchior d'Hondecoeter (c. 1636 – 3 April 1695), Dutch animalier painter, was born in Utrecht and died in Amsterdam. After the start of his career, he painted virtually exclusively bird subjects, usually exotic or game, in park-like landscapes. Hondecoeter’s paintings featured geese (brent goose, Egyptian brent and red-breasted brent), fieldfares, partridges, pigeons, ducks, magpies and peacocks, but also African grey crowned cranes, Asian sarus cranes, Indonesian yellow-crested cockatoos, an Indonesian purple-naped lory and grey-headed lovebirds from Madagascar.

Being the grandson of the painter Gillis d'Hondecoeter and the son of Gijsbert d'Hondecoeter, whose sister Josina married Jan Baptist Weenix, he was brought up in an artistic milieu. Melchior's cousin Jan Weenix told Arnold Houbraken that in his youth Melchior was extremely religious, praying very loud, so that his mother and uncle doubted if they would have him trained as a painter or a minister.

In 1659 he was working in the Hague and became a member of the painters' academy there. In 1663 Hondecoeter married Susanne Tradel in Amsterdam. She is said to have been captious, and she had her sisters living in their house, and so Hondecoeter spent much time in his garden or drinking in the tavern in the Jordaan. On the Lauriergracht, where he lived for a time, he was surrounded by art dealers and various painters. Later he moved to a house on Prinsengracht (near Anne Frank House). In 1686 he bought a small countryhouse in Vreeland along the Vecht (Utrecht). Hondecoeter died in the house of his daughter Isabel in Warmoesstraat but was buried in Westerkerk. His inventory lists a small gallows, to keep birds in the right position, and several paintings of Frans Snyders.

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