Netherlandish, 17th century;
nachMelchior de Hondecoeter

A Pelican, Ducks and a Magpie in a Landscape, after 1760

Blatt: 547 x 402 mm

Physical Description: Watercolour and body colour, partially gone over with brush and gum (arabic?), over black chalk or charcoal, over traces of squaring, on thin wove cardstock

Inventory Number: 36138

Object Number: 36138 D

Status: Request for presentation in the study room of the Prints and Drawings Department

Texts

About the Work

The depiction of a large pelican and other birds is a motif by Melchior d’ Hondecoeter, the most prominent bird painter of the Dutch Golden Age. Emphasizing the radiance of the colours, the anonymous copyist here made careful use of the body colour medium to describe even the smallest details. Drawn copies of paintings such as this one and those by Dirck Dalens, highly popular among eighteenth-century collectors, were no longer considered artworks in their own right in the nineteenth. At the Städel Museum, for example, they were classified as reproductions.

Work Data

Basic Information

Title: A Pelican, Ducks and a Magpie in a Landscape

Draughtsman

Netherlandish, 17th century;

Inventor

afterMelchior de Hondecoeter

Period Produced

17th century

Object Type

drawing

Physical Description: Watercolour and body colour, partially gone over with brush and gum (arabic?), over black chalk or charcoal, over traces of squaring, on thin wove cardstock

Material

Technique

Geographic Reference