水边的翠鸟

Van Gogh painted this in Paris in the summer of 1887, and it is a small picture, only about 26 centimetres tall. He did not paint it beside a river. He worked from a stuffed kingfisher he owned, a mounted bird that has actually survived, which is why the pose is so still and so exact. Look at the feet gripping the reed stem, carefully given because a real kingfisher needs them there. He lengthened the tail a little, most likely to balance the tilt of the raised beak. These were the Paris years, when he was pulling colour apart into separate bright strokes after seeing what the Impressionists were doing, and here that method is turned on a single bird among the reeds rather than a crowd or a boulevard.