A motif that appears twice

The record dates Still Life with Three Birds Nests to 1885. Nests are named in two titles in this catalogue, one dated 1884 and one dated 1885, and then never again across the remaining five years. Still lifes as a titled type are far more persistent — sixty-six entries in all, twelve of them dated 1885.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 33 by 42 centimetres, a small horizontal, and it is held by the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo. The measured palette reads as brown.

Why the constant subject is the useful one

Because the still life recurs in every period of this chronology — six dated 1884, sixteen dated 1887, thirteen dated 1888, seven dated 1890 — it is the closest thing the catalogue has to a control. The subject holds still while the years move, so what changes across it belongs to the date. Brown dominates thirty-one of the seventy works of this year; by the Arles still lifes the same reading has almost gone. That comparison the record supports. Anything about what the nests were, or where they were found, it does not.