Still Life with Three Birds' Nests

At the start of September 1885, Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo from the Brabant village of Nuenen that he had spent a fortnight in trouble with the local priests. They had warned villagers, with threats, not to let themselves be painted by him. A young woman he had often painted was expecting a child, and gossip named him as the father. He denied it, and went straight to the burgomaster to complain. Over the next weeks he kept painting still lifes, and on 4 October he told Theo that four pictures of birds' nests were finished. This canvas belongs to that short run. Three nests sit on a near-black ground, with pale eggs still lying in the one at the upper left. It now hangs in The Hague, on long-term loan to the Kunstmuseum from a private foundation.