A Macaw, Ducks, Parrots, and Other Birds in a Landscape

Jakob Bogda´ny, 1658–1724

between 1708 and 1710

Oil on canvas

Yale Center for British Art

A variety of birds, including a macaw, ducks, and parrots, are depicted in a natural landscape with a house and trees in the background. Jacob Bogdani, born in Hungary and active in London from 1688, painted these “fowl pieces” for elite patrons including Queen Anne. This collection of exotic species is a testament to the expansion of the British Empire by the early eighteenth century. The birds are gathered in an English landscape with a country cottage, where they mingle with English species (a mallard preens its feathers at the lower left and another flies off in the distance). The exotic birds were brought back to European menageries, where they evoked the distant colonies. The bright red bodies of the South American scarlet macaw (right) and the smaller North Am