A Cock, Hens and Chicks, c.1668/70 Melchior d'Hondecoeter (1636-1695)

We create our paintings with museum quality and covering the highest academic standards. Once we get your order, it will be entirely hand-painted with oil on canvas. All the materials we use are the highest level, being totally artist graded painting materials and linen canvas.

We will add 1.6" (4 cm) additional blank canvas all over the painting for stretching.

High quality and detailing in every inch are time consuming. The reproduction of Melchior d'Hondecoeter also needs time to dry in order to be completely ready for shipping, as this is crucial to not be damaged during transportation.
Based on the size, level of detail and complexity we need 8-9 weeks to complete the process.

In case the delivery date needs to be extended in time, or we are overloaded with requests, there will be an email sent to you sharing the new timelines of production and delivery.

TOPofART wants to remind you to keep patient, in order to get you the highest quality, being our mission to fulfill your expectations.

We not stretch and frame our oil paintings due to several reasons:
Painting reproduction is a high quality expensive product, which we cannot risk to damage by sending it being stretched.
Also, there are postal restrictions, regarding the size of the shipment.
Additionally, due to the dimensions of the stretched canvas, the shipment price may exceed the price of the product itself.

You can stretch and frame your painting in your local frame-shop.

Once the painting A Cock, Hens and Chicks is ready and dry, it will be shipped to your delivery address. The canvas will be rolled-up in a secure postal tube.

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The paintings we create are only of museum quality. Our academy graduated artists will never allow a compromise in the quality and detail of the ordered painting. TOPofART do not work, and will never allow ourselves to work with low quality studios from the Far East. We are based in Europe, and quality is our highest priority.

That cockerel knows he is being watched. He stands a little to the right, chest inflated to a burnished red, with a small, spiky crest like a decorative flourish. Behind him the sky is pale and calm, and his tail - black, but iridescent with green and purple - curls and flicks like expensive fabric.

Around this swaggering centre, domestic life goes on with quiet determination. A white hen sits low, catching the late light so that her plumage turns almost luminous; she seems to glow from within. Nearby a pale gold hen tips her head up, as if weighing the cockerel’s performance. In front, chicks pepper the ground in a loose scatter: cream, buff, soot-black. One tiny black chick sprints in from the left edge, wings spread and beak open, and you can practically hear the sharp, urgent cheep. That small note of sound keeps the whole scene from becoming merely decorative.

Melchior d’Hondecoeter is often praised for feathers, and here you see why. Look closely at the way the white hen’s body is built from soft, cloudy strokes, while the darker hen beside her is described with tighter, layered marks that make the wing feathers feel stiff and weighty. Even the cockerel’s red hackles read differently - sharper, more bristling - as if they could prickle your fingers. It is the sort of painting that reminds you how much seventeenth-century Dutch art loved looking, really looking.

Then there’s the setting: an overturned wicker basket, a wooden yoke, and a wild pigeon perched like a bystander on a makeshift stage. A finch darts through the air towards it. Behind, old stone architecture rises into shadow, opening onto a distant landscape that feels more southern than Holland - mountains, tall trees, a Mediterranean hint. D’Hondecoeter wasn’t interested in the muddy, everyday farmyard you might find in an Isack van Ostade; his birds are prize creatures, preened and presented, even when they’re simply pecking.

Perhaps that is the slyest pleasure of A Cock, Hens and Chicks. It offers an idyll, yes, but it also admits to theatre: the birds arranged as if for a portrait, the farm as a classical backdrop. Standing in front of it at the National Gallery London UK england united kingdom, one might imagine the faint scent of straw and warm feathers, while the cockerel holds his pose just a second longer.