Gillis d'Hondecoeter
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Gillis Claesz. de Hondecoeter or d'Hondecoeter (Antwerp or Mechelen, ca. 1575-1580 – Amsterdam, buried Oct 17, 1638) was a Dutch painter, working in a Flemish style. Gillis was the father of Gijsbert d'Hondecoeter and grandfather of the more successful Melchior d'Hondecoeter and Jan Weenix. His father Jan Baptist Weenix married Gillis' daughter Josijntje.
[edit] Life
Gillis d'Hondecoeter was the son of Nicolaes Jansz d'Hondecoeter, a painter who fled for religious reasons from Antwerp to Delft, after the Spanish occupied the city in 1585. Gillis married in 1602 Maaijke Gijbrechts in Delft, while working in Utrecht. The couple had six children, before they moved to Amsterdam in 1615, where another three children were baptized. His brother was a surgeon in that city.
In 1622 his wife died, six years later he married the (probably) beautiful and young Anna Spierinx, who first had refused his son Gijsbert, according to Arnold Houbraken. They had one child together.
[edit] Works
Gillis, his son Gijsbert and both his grandchildren painted fowl and birds, using probably a small gallow, as was mentioned in the inventory of his grandson Melchior de Hondecoeter. Jan Weenix always painted game somewhere in the scenery. The grandfather Gillis painted Flemish, hilly, fantasy landscapes, most of the time in connection with a biblical scene and an arrangement of tiny birds and animals. It is said he was may be influenced by Roelant Savery.
