(Utrecht 1636–1695 Amsterdam)
Game and a thistle on a stone plinth,
oil on canvas, 69 x 59 cm, framed

We are grateful to Fred Meijer for endorsing the attribution of the present painting to Melchior de Hondecoeter on the basis of a photograph. He dates it to the 1660s and compares it with a similar painting which was sold at Sotheby’s, London, 6 December 2007, lot 219.

The Dutch artist Melchior de Hondecoeter came from a prominent family of painters that included his grandfather Gillis de Hondecoeter, his father Gijsbert de Hondecoeter and his uncle Jan Baptist Weenix. Melchior apparently became an assistant in his uncle’s studio, and his earliest signed works are very much in the style of Weenix. A highly devout man in his youth, Melchior would often pray aloud, which caused his mother and uncle to doubt whether they ought to have him trained as a minister rather than a painter.

De Hondecoeter’s mature style owes much to the influence of the Flemish animal and still-life painter Frans Snyders, whose work Melchior collected. It was Snyders’s style that de Hondecoeter borrowed heavily from, notably his compositional formulas that he used consistently from the late 1660s.