After the Worm

An oil painting by Claire Chorley after Carel Fabritius' The Goldfinch (1654), one of the most quietly famous small pictures in Western painting.

The original — a panel measuring just 33.5 × 22.8 cm — hangs in the Mauritshuis in The Hague. Fabritius painted it in the same year he died in the Delft gunpowder explosion that destroyed much of his studio and most of his work. The bird sits tethered to a tin perch by a fine chain at its ankle, looking back at the viewer. Chorley's version restages the subject on canvas, in her own painterly hand, with the lightness she brings to her studio fruit and animal studies.

• Medium: Oil on canvas
• Picture size: 21.5 × 15.5 cm
• Framed size: 30 × 23.5 cm
• Framed: Yes — sold framed in a wooden frame with gilded inner lip.
• Year: 2026
• Edition: Unique
• Subject: European goldfinch — after Fabritius.
• Reference work: Carel Fabritius, The Goldfinch, 1654, Mauritshuis, The Hague (inv. no. 605).
• Catalogue Number: GS-149

Collection from the gallery (17 Princess Road, London NW1 8JR). Delivery in Primrose Hill or shipping by arrangement with the gallery.

About the artist: Claire Chorley →