Cock and two hens with their young attacked by a bird of prey, 1748

About the Work

A pigeon swoops fearsomely down from the sky, causing quite a commotion in the chicken yard. The landscape painter Dirk Dalens copied the composition from a painting by Melchior d’ Hondecoeter, the most well-known Netherlandish bird painter of the seventeenth century. He executed it in body colour, probably on commission from Cornelis Ploos van Amstel. It was by way of such commissions that collectors acquired drawn versions of paintings in other collections.