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Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales
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A park with swan and other birds
This is one of six canvases by the Antwerp painter Melchior d'Hondecoter which hung in the London home of Emily Charlotte, a daughter of C.R.M. Talbot (1803-90) of Margam Abbey and PenriceCastle. It depicts a country house park with fowl before a fountain and an ornamental terrace with statues and figures. Hondecoeter specialized in large decorative canvases populated with live birds. He painted both domestic and exotic birds with great realism, emphasizing their beauty of their colours and textures. Here European birds are shown alongside a peacock, a North American turkey and an African crowned crane in front of a fountain on an ornamental terrace. Such paintings were often used to decorate the country houses of wealthy Dutch patrons.
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Comments - (4)
Thank you for the information you provide for the painter Melchior d'Hondecoter. I have forwarded this information onto our Art Department who will check the information and update records as necessary, many thanks!
Graham Davies
Online Curator.
It made it through the WWI and WWII etc.
My mother made a statement to the police as she was hand cuffed to a toilet for 19hrs before being found.
We did not have the money to pay for the insurance who required metal blinded door to her apartment and connection to local police etc.
Since then we never heard of the Police/Interpol again and I am now using the internet to search for the painting that was cut out of the frame that was fairly large the usual size around 1,30 x 1.m70. I have thousand of family pictures but not one of the entire painting as it was very dark and not very photogenic.
Anyone can contact me via my website visualsenses com
But Being a Designer I can make a fairly detailed design of this particular painting as I saw it all my youth in our home in Austria and Belgium..
and recall exact all the content flowers birds etc I can even associate it with other M.d.Hondecoaeter paintings color scheme wise as I have collected most of his painting pics online.
Sad when one can not find such a family treasure anymore. My mother never wanted to sell it so keep it as MY bread and butter for later in life :-). So much for that . What are the ways via Internet to start and maybe find such a painting in auctions without spending thousands one like Artnet.com and others.
Anyone help would be very much appreciated if I could get my info into the official channel as when it was stolen there was no Internet and no visual help.