Hondecoeter was a member of a family of painters who specialised in the painting of animals. He learned the trade from his father, Gijsbert de Hondecoeter (1604-1653), and his uncle, Jan Baptist Weenix (1621-1660?), who created decorative paintings in a style influenced by Italian painting. Hondecoeter’s works are underpinned by a moralising intent, using fables or praising fowl over wild birds because they were the first animals put to the service of humankind. This inclination was highly appreciated by Dutch Protestants, coinciding as it did with the extolling of work as a bedrock component of their religion. Hondecoeter’s faithful depiction of these animals leads us to believe that he must have used stuffed fowl, given the difficulty of working with moving animals.
The attribution in 1950-51 of this work to Hondecoeter, the best-known and prestigious 17^th century Dutch painter of birds, when it came on the Barcelona art market, was refuted by E. Valdivieso, who believed that the piece did not bear any relation with the painter’s signature style. However, the quality of the painting, the treatment of the plumage and the diagonal composition, broken in the top right corner by the light flooding the composition, led Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez to maintain the attribution until the appearance of further data.
Hondecoeter tended to centre his compositions around a major group of animals, introducing other smaller ones on the sides, who seem to react to the presence of the spectator, as in this painting. The use of architectural elements to balance the different masses is a standard recourse in his output from the 1660s.
This artist enjoyed such celebrity and prestige that his works were copied and imitated even in the 17^th century itself and therefore the hypothesis that this painting may have been done by another hand should not be discarded. The format of the canvas has been slightly altered from the original.