Exotic birds brought from the Dutch colonies became a popular feature of Dutch gardens in the seventeenth century. This fashion was accompanied by the development of a new type of large-scale decorative painting portraying exotic fowl in a formal garden. In Birds in a Landscape, domestic fowl and pigeons mix with a peacock and pheasants in a formal garden setting with a fountain, evoking the Eden-like qualities of even the most formal of Baroque gardens.