MELCHIOR, a famous Dutch painter born at Utrecht, excelled in painting animals, and especially birds. His father and grandfather were of the same profession, and their subjects the same. He was trained up to the art by his father; but surpassed not only him, but even the best of his contemporaries, in a very high degree. Till he was seventeen years of age, he continued under the direction of his father, and accustomed himself to paint several sorts of birds; but particularly he was pleased to represent cocks, hens, ducks, chickens, and peacocks, which he described in an elegant variety of actions and attitudes. After his father's death, which happened in 1653, he received some instructions from his uncle John Baptist Weenix; but his principal and best instructor was nature, which he studied with intense application. His pencil was wonderfully neat and delicate; his touch light; his colouring exceedingly natural, lively, and remarkably transparent; and the feathers of his fowls were expressed with such a swelling softness, as might have readily and agreeably deceived the eye of any spectator.