Still Life with Three Birds' Nests

In the autumn of 1885 Van Gogh was living in the village of Nuenen, in the Dutch countryside, and he had taken to collecting birds' nests. He gathered them on his walks, kept a shelf of them, and even mailed spare ones to his friend the painter Anthon van Rappard, saying that birds like the wren and the golden oriole deserved to be counted among the artists. He painted about five of these nest still lifes that October. This one is really a study in tone, browns and mossy greens worked against a dark ground, built entirely from the earth colours he still trusted. A few months later he left for Antwerp and then Paris, where the bright palette we now expect from him would arrive.