Landscape with Poultry and Birds of Prey, n.d. 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 Landscape with Poultry and Birds of Prey is ready and dry, it will be shipped to your delivery address. The canvas will be rolled-up in a secure postal tube.

We offer free shipping as well as paid express transportation services.

After adding your artwork to the shopping cart, you will be able to check the delivery price using the Estimate Shipping and Tax tool.

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.

A rooster flares like a small bonfire – saffron, rust, and bottle green – while the hen beside him stiffens, neck stretched, as if listening for the next beat of trouble. Around their feet, the yard is littered with the evidence of ordinary life: scattered grain, pebbles, and a few downy feathers. Yet nothing here is merely pastoral. Suspended above the birds, a predator slices through the air, wings angled, that pale underside catching the light like a warning.

Melchior d'Hondecoeter builds the scene the way a good dramatist sets a stage. A block of masonry and a rough wall give the central group a kind of proscenium, pressing the action forward; to the left, the world opens into distance, with a wide sky and a low, cooling horizon. That contrast matters. It tells you where safety might have been, and where it isn’t now. A blue-grey bird of prey perches high on the stone, slightly apart, the cool sheen of its wings painted with a calm that feels almost insulting.

Look at the paint handling. The plumage isn’t fussy; it’s specific. Short, directional strokes map the rooster’s hackles, while the darker hen on the right carries a patterned cloak of browns and blacks, dotted like leaf-shadow. One detail feels especially observed: the little chicks at the lower right are sketched with barely more than warm, buttery touches, as if their softness resists definition. That tenderness makes the hovering threat feel sharper. You can almost hear the racket – claws on dirt, sudden squawks, wingbeats beating the heavy air.

This kind of charged barnyard encounter was a favourite of d'Hondecoeter, and you sense why. It lets him study movement and reaction – the freeze, the puffing up, the turning of heads – while still showing off the textures that made his bird paintings so sought after in Dutch Baroque interiors. The compositional idea recalls Frans Snyders, with its central knot of animals and cropped bodies at the edges, as though the commotion continues beyond the frame.

Seen at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes Buenos Aires Argentina, Landscape with Poultry and Birds of Prey feels less like a “scene” than a moment you walk into. Perhaps that is its slyest pleasure: nature here isn’t noble or cruel, just alert, busy, and utterly present – and we, for once, are the ones arriving late.