page_title: Still life paintings by Vincent van Gogh (Netherlands)
section_title: Bird's nests
hierarchical_section_title: Still life paintings by Vincent van Gogh (Netherlands) / Bird's nests
context_page_description: Still life paintings by Vincent van Gogh (Netherlands) is the subject of many drawings, sketches and paintings made during Vincent van Gogh's early artistic career. Most still lifes made in the Netherlands are dated from 1884 to 1885, when he lived in Nuenen. His works were often in somber colors. Van Gogh experimented with the use of light falling across objects.
  The next two years, transformed the subjects, color and techniques that van Gogh used in creating still life paintings. In Paris he painted many still life paintings of flowers, experimenting with color, light and techniques he learned from modern artists.
context_section_description: Van Gogh painted five paintings of birds' nests in October 1885.  According to van Gogh's friend Anton Kerssemakers, he had "no less than 30 different birds' nests" in his studio, collected from his walks or purchased from children for roughly 10 cents per nest. For the more elaborate nests, such as the two ball-shaped wrens' nests in the top right of the Still Life with Birds' Nests (F111) painting, van Gogh would pay more. The Van Gogh Museum comments: "The relatively light foreground and background of the canvas was probably applied a couple of years later. By then Van Gogh had come into contact with the bright colors of the Impressionists during his time in Paris, and he seems to have found the dark background too somber."
  Early September 1885, Van Gogh wrote: "I am now busy painting still lifes of my birds' nests, four of which are finished; I think some people who are good observers of nature might like them because of the colors of the moss, the dry leaves and the grasses."  With a Bird's Nest sketch (Sketch F425, JH 943), van Gogh commented in the same letter of his tender feelings for nests of birds and people: "When winter comes (when I have more time for it) I shall make more drawings of this kind of thing. La nichée et les nids [the nestlings and the nests], I feel deeply for them – especially people's nests, those huts on the heath and their inhabitants."
caption: Still Life with Birds' Nests, 1885, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (F111)
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