Kingfisher by the Waterside

Kingfisher by the Waterside (1887) at the Van Gogh Museum is one of the most overtly Japanese works in Van Gogh's Paris output — a small, precise study of a bird in its natural habitat that attempts the combination of close observation and decorative elegance that he admired in Hiroshige and Hokusai's bird-and-flower prints. He had been collecting Japanese woodblock prints since his time in Antwerp and had assembled a substantial collection by 1887; he and Theo jointly displayed prints in their Lepic Street apartment and used them as a touchstone against which to evaluate their developing aesthetic. The kingfisher — with its extraordinary blue-green iridescence and its dramatic dive into water as a hunting technique — offered a subject with both technical challenge and visual intensity. Hiroshige had painted kingfishers in his Hundred Famous Views of Edo series, and Van Gogh's waterside study is in direct dialogue with those images. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

The precise rendering of a bird in its natural environment requires a different approach from Van Gogh's usual gestural landscape manner—more careful, observational brushwork in the bird itself, more freely handled surroundings. The kingfisher's brilliant plumage is likely rendered with clean, bright strokes that capture its distinctive iridescence. The water and bank are painted with the directional marks of his landscape work.