The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch is a small, cabinet-sized painting by Carel Fabritius (circa 1654) showing a goldfinch perched on a blue-gray feeding trough with a chain visible beneath, set against a pale, nearly empty background. The composition is tightly cropped and off-center to the right, with light coming from the left that softly models the bird’s warm browns, grays, and touches of red, and casts a gentle shadow to the right. The work uses restrained, naturalistic brushwork and a subdued palette to emphasize precise observation and a quiet, almost contemplative mood characteristic of Fabritius’s Dutch Golden Age realism.