Royal Birds

The Dordrechts Museum presents exceptional loans from the Royal Collections of the Netherlands and Museum Arnhem: two works by Aert Schouman and a painting by Melchior d’Hondecoeter. The loan of d’Hondecoeter’s work was made possible with the support of Vereniging Rembrandt.

Aert Schouman is regarded as one of the finest Dordrecht painters of the eighteenth century. He is known for his wall paintings and his highly detailed animal drawings. In the menagerie of William V, behind Huis ten Bosch – a precursor to the modern zoo – Schouman produced watercolours and wall decorations based on living, exotic animals, including birds, an orangutan, elephants, and deer. Together with d’Hondecoeter’s The Fable of the Raven Robbed of His Feathers from Museum Arnhem, these works reveal a shared fascination with birds in the seventeenth and eighteenth century.

Cover image: Abraham Busschop, The Raven Robbed of the Feathers with Which He Adorned Himself, 1708, oil on canvas, 166 × 294 cm, Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht