Birds and Fruit in a Landscape

Hungarian-British painter Jakob Bogdani was inspired by bird painter par excellence Melchior de Hondecoeter, whose work he first encountered in Amsterdam in the 1680s. In Britain, Bogdani honed this specialism by studying birds in the aviaries and menageries of some of his wealthy clientele. Here, he combines still life and bird-painting in a highly staged composition: a large red-crested cockatoo frames the scene of small parakeets and tiny passerines gathered around peaches and grapes.