Les Dénicheurs

Two children crouch against a great tree trunk, the elder leaning down to the younger with something small held in his hands, a dark overturned hat of blossoms at their feet — the nest-thief subject, children robbing birds’ nests, here given the warm, shadowed gravity of an English rustic genre panel. Edward Bird (1772–1819), a Bristol-born painter who made his name in London with scenes of cottage and market life in the manner of the Dutch and Flemish genre masters, painted this panel about 1800; its deep glazing and concentrated light look back to Rembrandt and Teniers even as the subject looks forward to the sentimental genre of the early nineteenth century. The painting is held in the Musée Cognacq-Jay, le goût du XVIIIe.