Old Masters and 19th Century Art

We would like to thank Mr. Fred Meijer for his kind assistance in researching and cataloguing the present lot.

Provenance:

Purchased by the City of Philadelphia with the W. P. Wilstach Fund, Philadelphia, November 30, 1896 (as 'Workshop of Melchior de Hondecoeter' (Dutch, 1636-1695)).

Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (now Philadelphia Art Museum), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (accession number W1896-1-12).

Lot Note:

This large and lively Poultry Yard reflects the enduring popularity of Melchior d’Hondecoeter’s bird scenes, and ultimately set the standard for Dutch animal painting in the late seventeenth century. The subject, featuring a peacock, rooster, and an assortment of domestic and exotic fowl animated before a formal garden, derives closely from a smaller, more refined version in the Hamburger Kunsthalle (Revolt in the Poultry Coop) and from several other known variants inventoried through the RKD. 

The Philadelphia painting however, is significantly enlarged along the left and lower edges. Differences in handling between the central birds (most notably the meticulously rendered peacock and rooster) and those on the periphery suggest multiple hands at work, thus making it a collaborative work, or at least a composition executed in a workshop setting. In 1990, correspondence between the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Professor Fred Meijer in the Netherlands suggested the lavish bouquet and surrounding vegetation were in fact painted by Philip van Kouwenbergh (1671–1729), an artist celebrated for his floral still lifes who often borrowed motifs from d’Hondecoeter’s compositions. Indeed, the floral passage and certain landscape elements appear consistent with Kouwenbergh’s style, while many of the bird motifs repeat known Hondecoeter models—including the cluster of chicks in the foreground, directly echoing Seven Chicks, a workshop study now in the Rijksmuseum.

Whether Kouwenbergh collaborated with a follower of Hondecoeter or executed the entire composition within his own studio remains uncertain. The painting nonetheless illustrates the diffusion of Hondecoeter’s imagery in the decades following his death, as later painters adapted and expanded his celebrated poultry-yard scenes for a new generation of collectors.