202. DOMESTIC POULTRY _Melchior de Hondecoeter_ (Dutch: 1636-1695). This painter, a member of a noble family of Brabant, devoted himself to the poultry-yard, and became famous for his pictures of fowl and other birds. His compositions show a constant study of the subjects he treats. He studied first under his father, Gysbert de Hondecoeter, and afterwards under his uncle, Jan Baptist Weenix (1096). "A beautiful brood of young chickens in the foreground. The cock was Hondecoeter's favourite bird, which he is said to have taught to stand to him in a fixed position as a model." (Official Catalogue). 203. CONVENTUAL CHARITY. _William van Herp_ (Flemish: 1614-1677). Works by W. Van Herp, a member of the Painters' Guild at Antwerp, are not numerous. They show the influence of Rubens and also of Jordaens, the two leaders of the Flemish School at his time. Franciscan friars are distributing food to the poor at the gate of a convent. 204. DUTCH SHIPPING. _Bakhuizen_ (Dutch: 1631-1708). Ludolf Bakhuizen comes second in the succession of Dutch sea painters to W. van de Velde, and the reader is referred to the remarks on that painter (see under 149) for the general characteristics of them both. Whereas, however, Van de Velde preferred calms, Bakhuizen preferred storms, and even "voluntarily exposed his life several times," says a compatriot, "for the sake of seizing, in all its horrible reality, the effects of rough weather" (Havard: _The Dutch School_, p. 255). It cannot be said, however, that the result was very successful. There is, adds the same critic, a hardness about his forms and a want of transparency in his colours "which cannot be counterbalanced by the fury of upheaved waves or the furious driving of the heavy clouds across the sky." Bakhuizen, before he took to painting, was successively a book-keeper (his father was town-clerk of Emden) and a writing-master. Perhaps it is to his experience in the latter capacity that the hardness and "peruke-like" regularity of his waves are due. In his own day, however, his sea-pieces were very greatly esteemed. The King of Prussia was among his patrons, and the Tzar, Peter the Great, frequently visited his studios, and even himself took lessons of him. He made many constructive drawings of ships for that monarch. He was also an etcher, and the British Museum possesses a fragment of a sketch-book of his. 205. ITINERANT MUSICIANS. _J. W. E. Dietrich_ (German: 1712-1774).