Enigma of existence

Extract from Brigid Brophy‘s essay on Carel Fabritius.

The small painting of a goldfinch by Carel Fabritius is one of the world’s memorable pictures: simple in the extreme yet deeply enigmatic.

The goldfinch, who is an adult male, stands with his body in profile to the spectator, but he has turned his head and s looking out of the picture virtually front-face,

Is the picture a portrait? The question, to which I think the answer is almost certainly ‘Yes!, is no whimsy. I was for some years on terms of talk-and-touch friendship with several wild and free urban pigeons. I learned what I imagine better-versed humans have always known: out of dozens of the same species you recognise the birds you are acquainted with exactly as you recognise your human acquaintances in a crowded room – by the individual cast of their faces.

‘Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius’, Brigid Brophy, Reads (Cardinal 1989)