Melchior d’Hondecoeter was a seventeenth - C Dutch painter who narrow down in birds . He died exactly 313 eld ago on this day of the month , at the historic period of 61 . So lease ’s take a look at Melchior d’Hondecoeter ’s life and his 1683 painting , " Peacocks . "
1.Like many artists , Melchior d’Hondecoeter was deliver into a family of other talented artists . Both his founder , Gijsbert , and his grandad , Gillis , were also established painter specializing in shuttle . Melchior initially studied under his male parent but , upon his father ’s death , took up cogitation under his uncle , Jan Baptist Weenix , a renowned Italianate puma .
2.Despite his phratry ’s esthetic tendencies , when Melchior was young , his female parent and uncle were unsure whether he should be aim as a painter . Supposedly , the young Melchior was extremely spiritual and had a propensity to implore very aloud .
3.Melchior ’s early paintings were actually sea and fish scenes , admit one entitle , " Tub with Fish , " from 1655 . He eventually open in to the class preference for birds , though , and almost all of his other paintings are of birds .
4.Melchior was lie with for realistic and precise depictions of birds ; some people deemed him even better than his founding father and grandfather . Yet what really made Melchior ’s painting of birdie endure out was that he paint the birds as living beings " with passions , pleasure , reverence , and run-in . " One critic fit so far as to say , " Hondecoeter displays the maternity of the hen with as much tenderness and feel as Raphael the maternity of Madonnas . "
5.Although most , if not all , of Melchior ’s paintings are signed , he rarely date his paintings . The 1905Catalogue of the Pictures in the Rijks - Museum(pages 162 - 164 ) include copies of his signatures next to the descriptions of the paintings on which they seem .
A larger edition of " Peacocks " is availablehere .
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