Gijsbert d'Hondecoeter
1604–1653 · Dutch Republic · Dutch Golden Age painting
The story
Gijsbert d'Hondecoeter was the middle link in a chain of painters. His grandfather Nicolaes, from Mechelen in Flanders, had taken the family north to Delft before 1601, and his father Gillis painted landscapes and animals in Utrecht and Amsterdam. Gijsbert was born in Utrecht in 1604, trained under his father and became a member of the Utrecht painters' guild.
His early landscapes follow Roelant Savery, a Flemish painter of dense woods full of animals who had settled in Utrecht. Over time the birds took over, and he became a painter of cocks, hens and ducks set in open country.
He died in Utrecht in 1653, when his son Melchior was about 17. Melchior finished his training with Jan Baptist Weenix, a painter who had married into the family, and went on to make birds the whole of his career in Amsterdam.
