View of a Terrace with a Page Descending
Melchior de Hondecoeter (Utrecht 1636 – Amsterdam 1695)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1670 - 1680
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
3607 x 2642 mm (142 x 104 in)
Place of origin
Holland
Order this imageCollection
Belton House, Lincolnshire (Accredited Museum)
On show at
Hondecoeter Room, Belton House, Lincolnshire, Midlands, National Trust
NT 436165
Caption
This is one of a set of decorative pictures, painted reasonably early in Hondecoeter’s career, all of which are signed (another comparable set is now in the Alte Pinacothek, Munich). It is not known where in the Low Countries these scenes were originally painted for, or even if they were originally intended to hang together. Even before coming to Belton in 1873, they had been cut and adapted to fit another house in England. A fourth canvas, with Orpheus playing to the animals, could not be fitted in, and is now in a private collection in USA. The paintings were restored between 1985 and 1991 at the Hamilton Kerr Institute, Cambridge.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, View of a Terrace with a Page Descending by Melchior de Hondecoeter (Utrecht 1636 – Amsterdam 1695), signed, 1670-1680. A garden terrace with a stone staircase outside a pavilion, with a pageboy descending, carrying a dish of fruit. A spaniel and dead game with the implements of the chase are on the terrace with domestic poultry.
Provenance
Bought by Adelbert Wellington Brownlow Cust, 3rd Earl Brownlow (1844 - 1921) in 1873; purchased with a grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) from Edward John Peregrine Cust, 7th Baron Brownlow, C. St J. (b.1936) in 1984
Credit line
Belton House, The Brownlow Collection (acquired with the help of the National Heritage Memorial Fund by the National Trust in 1984)
Makers and roles
Melchior de Hondecoeter (Utrecht 1636 – Amsterdam 1695), artist
References
Laing 1991 Alastair Laing, 'Whence this clutch of four?', Country Life, vol.CLXXXVI, 1991, pp.172-3 Prized Possessions: Dutch Paintings from National Trust Houses (exh cat) Holburne Museum, Bath, 25 May-16 September 2018, Mauritshuis, The Hague, 11 October 2018-6 January 2019, Petworth House, West Sussex, 16 January-24 March 2019, pp.19-20