Bronze Age Gold from Wales

Born in Utrecht, where he studied with his father Gillis and his uncle Jan Baptist Weenix, Hondecoter had moved by 1659 to the Hague, where he became head of the painter's confraternity. By 1663 he had settled at Amsterdam. He specialised in large decorative paintings of birds. This is one of six Hondecoter canvases which hung in the dining room of 3 Cavendish Square, the London home of Emily Charlotte (d. 1918), a daughter of Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot of Margam Abbey and Penrice Castle. It includes a swan, pheasant, shelducks, a goldeneye and a flying teal, before a wreathed urn and a broken balustrade and entablature.