Poultry-yard with Angered Cock

Melchior d'Hondecoeter painted this in the 1670s, at the height of his career as the Netherlands' leading painter of birds. He came from a family of bird painters: his father Gijsbert and his grandfather Gillis both specialized in the subject. A farmyard full of birds is thrown into chaos. A cock pheasant stands at the center, its feathers ruffled, its beak open in alarm. Hens scatter around it, some taking flight, others pressing against the ground. A peacock stands on a perch in the upper right, its tail trailing down. Ducks and other waterfowl are visible in the background. The birds are painted in meticulous detail, each feather individually rendered, each bird in a different posture of alarm. Hondecoeter was born in Utrecht in 1636 and worked in Amsterdam from 1663 until his death in 1695. He was the specialist in bird paintings, a genre that had a strong market in the Dutch Republic. His paintings were collected by wealthy merchants who wanted images of the rural life that their city wealth distanced them from. The birds are not idealized. They are shown with the same attention to behavior and anatomy that a naturalist would bring to the subject. The "angered cock" in the title refers to the central bird's aggressive posture. The painting captures a moment of conflict in the farmyard, the kind of scene that Hondecoeter painted repeatedly. His compositions are always dynamic, with birds in motion and the viewer placed at the center of the action. Oil on canvas, roughly 73 by 92 centimeters. Hondecoeter used fine, precise brushwork for the feathers and broader strokes for the landscape background. The light is even, typical of outdoor scenes painted in the studio. This painting works well in a kitchen, dining room, or country-style interior. The 16x20 framed version in a red oak frame complements the natural subject matter. The horizontal format suits a wide wall space. The painting is in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. This is a public domain artwork, sourced from the Rijksmuseum via Wikimedia Commons. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 24x36 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.