![]() ![]() ![]() It may have been part of a cage as described above, for instance, but with a painted instead of a real bird. This has prompted various speculations regarding the painting’s original function. The scene is painted on a fairly thick small panel, which has been sawn from a far larger one. The red paint in the bird’s head, which has become somewhat discoloured over time, must also have originally added a far more expressive colour accent. The little yellow feather in the black wing provides a striking colour accent. The paint has been applied in varying thicknesses, and in some places in thick impasto. The goldfinch has been painted vigorously, in brushstrokes that can be clearly distinguished from one another. ![]() Attached to the bottom of the support was a wooden platform with a circular hole through which the little bucket could be lowered. They generally had feeding-boxes like the one depicted here, attached to a long wall-support, above which there was often another box, sometimes in the form of a little house with a step-gable. ![]() Goldfinches were popular pets in the seventeenth century because of their ability to learn these tricks. It can also open its feeding-box with its beak. It owes its Dutch nickname, puttertje (‘water-drawer’), to its adroitness in drawing water from a bowl or glass using a thimble-sized bucket on a chain. The bird chained to its feeding-box, where it perches against a whitewashed wall, is a European goldfinch ( Carduelis carduelis). ![]()
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