Papegaai op een tak van een boom 1694 - 1749

Peter Casteels the third rendered this parrot on a branch with watercolor and pen and ink sometime in the first half of the 18th century. The paper support has a subtle texture, which gives the washes of color a delicate, granular quality. You can see how the artist exploited the fluidity of the medium, letting the colors bleed and blend to suggest the parrot's plumage and the rough bark of the branch. Pen and ink work have been added to accentuate the contours of the bird and other aspects of the composition. Watercolor was commonly used for preparatory drawings. The labor is subtle, but the effect is immediate. In this case, we can appreciate it as a finished work of art. It speaks to a culture in which the natural world, in its most exotic forms, was becoming an object of both scientific and aesthetic fascination. And it challenges our assumptions about what constitutes a complete, resolved work of art.