Painting: Four Little Chicks by Sterling Strauser

Four little chicks, as promised. Nobody is going anywhere in particular.

Four Little Chicks is an oil on board by Sterling Strauser (1907-1995), signed and dated 1967. Small animal paintings like this are made for domestic walls, and to please the painter as much as anyone. Four round, golden birds stand in a line against a dark green ground, their bodies built up in thick dabs of yellow. Legs and beaks are the barest ticks of black. One looks down, two look left, and one seems to be smiling. The image is twenty inches wide. Framed, twenty-seven inches wide and eleven and a quarter high.

Art history has weightier subjects. Few of them are this round.