Dutch School, Hen and Chicks in a Farmyard with a Windmill, Oil on Canvas, Circa 1700, Framed
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Description
▾Chicks everywhere, and not two the same colour. Yellow, grey, brown, one of them still shapeless with down, scattered around the white cockerel at the centre of the yard.
Oil on canvas, relined, 25 x 36 inches (64 x 91 cm), 27 x 38 inches (69 x 97 cm) framed, unsigned. Dutch School, circa 1700, in a later gilt frame.
The cockerel is the only thing in the picture given any real finish. His plumage is built in short parallel strokes of grey, pale straw and broken white, laid side by side rather than blended, the comb and wattles in a red that appears nowhere else, and the eye a single dark point ringed in light. A hen stands behind him with her tail spread. To the left a chick pecks at the rim of an earthenware pan. The whole foreground is a stage of trodden earth, straw and a fallen beam, and the ground rises behind to a broken wall with a post mill standing against a yellow sky beyond.
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A formula that outlived its century The poultry yard with a distant windmill was invented in Holland in the middle of the seventeenth century and painted there for a hundred and fifty years afterwards. By the date of this canvas it had left the cabinet and gone into the house, painted at the size of an overdoor for people who wanted the subject rather than the name. That is why the birds are finished and the architecture is not. |
The paint at the upper left is thinned to the ground in long vertical passages, so the ruined wall and the sky read unevenly and the architecture is now more suggested than described. The birds, the foreground and the landscape to the right are sound, under a fine age craquelure. The canvas is relined on a later keyed stretcher.
Provenance ▾
Details
▾Artist
Dutch School, circa 1700Period
Circa 1700Origin
NetherlandsStyle
Dutch SchoolMedium
Oil on canvas, relinedSignature
UnsignedFrame
A later moulded frame, water gilt over a red bole ground, the gilding worn through to the bole and to the white gesso in places, with chips along the lower edge. Not original to the picture.Features
Original, one of a kindDimensions
▾Painting
25 x 36 inchesFramed
27 x 38 inchesCondition
Relined and stable on a later keyed stretcher. The paint at the upper left is thinned to the ground in long vertical passages, consistent with an old cleaning, and the wall and sky read unevenly there. Fine age craquelure throughout with scattered small losses. Old damp staining on the relining canvas, not through to the front.
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