Mountainous landscape with ducks

Mountainous landscape with ducks, fully signed and dated 1683, is the earliest known work by Adriaen Coorte, a painter who is primarily known for his small and simple still life paintings. It is also the largest painting Coorte ever made. The style and composition of this painting is so closely related to the work of the bird painter Melchior d'Hondecoeter (1636-1695) that Coorte can be assumed to have worked in Hondecoeter's studio in Amsterdam in the early 1680s. After 1683 Coorte stopped painting birds and concentrated exclusively on still lifes.