Against brass, the gold reads less sweet, more deliberate. The blue of the bird does the rest, holding the eye in a room that might otherwise drift. Hang it where people sit still for a while: above a sideboard in the dining room, over a bedroom chest of drawers, or at the end of a hallway where it can be seen from a distance. It works with velvet, silk, dark wood and painted panelling, and it likes company in the form of blue-and-white china or a single pink flower stem. Don’t crowd it with more florals or more gold. One gilded thing per wall is plenty, and this piece is happy to be it. As a canvas the surface reads like a painted panel, with no glazing between you and the colour.