Adriaen Coorte

(active Middleburg, circa 1683-circa 1707)

A dead pheasant with dead song birds at the foot of a tree

Footnotes

Provenance
Private Collection, Belgium

We are grateful to Quentin Buvelot for confirming the attribution of this painting to Adriaen Coorte on first hand inspection. We are also grateful to Dr. Fred Meijer for further endorsing the painting on first hand inspection and for dating this work to the early 1680s.

This recently discovered composition by Adriaen Coorte, which is now his largest known work, can be placed together with his earliest known paintings: his Mountain landscape with ducks (signed and dated 1683 (on canvas, 84 x 70 cm., in The Kremer Collection,) and his Pelican with ducks, (also signed and dated 1683, 39 x 48 cm., in the Ashmolean Museum). An undated work that was attributed to Coorte by Fred Meijer may also be the artist's earliest known painting. Its subject, a hen and her chicks, is derived from d'Hondecoeter and the chicks in fact belong to the latter's standard repertoire. Buvelot also comments that the framing of the scene with a tree and undergrowth strongly recalls the signed painting with ducks from 1683 which provides a similar glimpse of landscape (see: Q. Buvelot, The Still Lifes of Adriaen Coorte (active c. 1683-1707), The Hague, 2008, cat. nos. 1,2,3)

From these paintings it has been concluded that Coorte spent some time in Amsterdam since the style and composition of all of these paintings, in which waterfowl are the primary motif, are very similar to the oeuvre of the Amsterdam painter, Melchior d'Hondecoeter (1636-93). The latter's decorative paintings with birds were generally made for the country homes of high-ranking burghers. Since Coorte borrowed from d'Hondecoeter's specific compositions there seems to be no doubt that he was working in d'Hondecoeter's studio around 1683 (and the occurrence of the name 'Coorte' in earlier archival documents from Amsterdam indicates that the painter had relatives in the city). It may also be that Coorte worked on some of d'Hondecoeter's paintings since the latter is known to have had studio assistants to help him execute some of his larger works.

Coorte appears to have stopped painting birds after 1683, with the exception of a painting from 1699, which depicts a hoopoe above a still life of asparagus and strawberries. This was again based on a painting by d'Hondecoeter.