Programme Outline
We need to remember that the people who made the art were not historians or journalists. Although an artist may have tried to record the appearance of an object or person truthfully, we must always evaluate the evidence with an open mind as to its purpose.
In An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, the bird in question is a white cockatoo. Cockatoos were rare and expensive in the 1760s, and would never have been used in an experiment. Might this exotic bird have been chosen to make the painting more dramatic? Avercamp’s Winter Scene of all classes of Dutch society coming together to enjoy a special event is vivid and evocative, but it is not the picture of a real place; it is a distillation of his observations.
© 2000 Channel Four Television Corporation
