“Caravaggio’s Cupid” exhibition at the Wallace Collection ✎

Earlier this year, I visited the Wallace Collection in London to see Caravaggio’s famous Victorious Cupid (also known as Amor Vincit Omnia), painted in 1601-02.

This was the first time this monumental Baroque masterpiece had ever been seen in public in the UK. I really enjoyed this once-in-a-lifetime display of one of the great masterpieces.

Rating: 4/5 ★★★★

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Victorious Cupid by Caravaggio (1601-1602)

I found this painting both captivating and a bit unsettling.

As I stood in front of it, the tension between classical idealism and raw gritty street reality becomes clear.

Caravaggio painted Cupid. As embodiment of love, he conquers the lute (music), armour (war), a globe (travel), manuscript (learning).

Usually, Cupid was depicted as a soft cherubic being. But, Caravaggio did the opposite. He hired a real street kid from Rome - it was suggested that the model was his lover (Francesco Boneri).

Also, is there something mocking in Cupid’s grin? He knows we want love, or carnality. 😉

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Caravaggio painted heavy sweeping eagle wings with extraordinary plumage and feathers.

The chiaroscuro emphasises his soft & warm rounded fleshiness of cheeks. 

I think Caravaggio’s smile carries a sense of playful, perhaps teasing intimacy.

Pieter De Hooch’s Puzzle Box By Susan Tallman ✎

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This painting and accompanying analysis appeared in The Atlantic (“Look Closer: Pieter De Hooch’s Puzzle Box”) recently.

My thoughts:

I love the sense of quiet dignity surrounding the daily domestic routines (which were central to Dutch self-image) that always inform his work. While the setting is peaceful and charming, the sombre expressions seem out-of-place and probably reflect de Hooch’s & Amsterdam’s emphasis on duty. I love the winding staircase, it skillfully guide’s the viewer’s eye deeper into the painting. There is a yearning to look beyond into the canal houses De Hooch painted just beyond the doorway. 

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Look Closer: Pieter De Hooch’s Puzzle Box 

By Susan Tallman (The Atlantic, August 2026 Issue)

Pieter de Hooch was a contemporary of Johannes Vermeer in the Dutch city of Delft for a time; they painted similar subjects, in similar costumes, engaged in similarly quotidian activities. But they were quite different artists. De Hooch’s 1663 painting Interior With Women Beside a Linen Cupboard delivers exactly as little drama and numinous transcendence as its title promises. (It was formerly called The Good Housewife, which is hardly better.) The intrigue lies elsewhere.

De Hooch’s picture is a puzzle box—an ingenious construction of openings and closings, insides and outsides, revelation and concealment. The sturdy wall behind the standing women with their crisply folded stack of linen is breached in three different places, extending our vista with sudden depth. On the right is a stairway twisting up and out of sight, on the left a window, and in the center a door.

These last two open onto the voorhuis, a foyer punctuated with a second, taller window and another doorway, beyond which we can see a sunlit snippet of the outside world—a bit of tree, the suggestion of a canal, and a building on the opposite side, with its own syncopated grid of windows, doors, and brickwork. (Look again at the spot of sky, diced by overlapping panes of glass, and you might catch a glimpse of the light and structure, the clarity and enigma, of Piet Mondrian.)

Our attention is being endlessly redirected. The brightest things in the picture—that bit of blue heaven and the red-and-white house across the canal—are also the most distant. Meanwhile, the one piece of incipient action is hidden in shadow: a child of 5 or 6, standing on the threshold between what we can see clearly and what we can’t, with a kolf stick cocked to send a small ball straight out of the picture and into our world.

Looked at one way, De Hooch’s scene is assertively ordinary. Looked at another way, it’s a lesson in the limits of visibility and knowledge. There’s the rectilinear orderliness of floor tiles and bricks, limpid windowpanes, and perfectly folded fabric. And there’s mayhem, writ small, in the unpredictable trajectories of a child and a ball.

“Wellington’s Dutch Masterpieces” exhibition at Apsley House ✎

Earlier this year, I went to Apsley House at Hyde Park Corner for a very special exhibition.

Apsley House is the home of the Duke of Wellington. The 1st Duke established both his fame and wealth in the Napoleonic wars.

France, in 1816-1818, was a period time of immense economic disruption and ruination. Napoleon’s defeat left many French aristocrats, military officers, and financiers financially ruined. As such, the Duke purchased these 17th-century Dutch paintings at public auctions in Paris, and out-bid everyone & acquired top-tier masterworks, like Jan Steen’s The Wedding Party, with ease.

What makes this exhibition fascinating, and beautiful, is that it displays 18 magnificent 17th-century Dutch paintings collected by the 1st Duke of Wellington. These intimate genre scenes and landscapes of Wellington’s feature the ordinary people of the Dutch Golden Age, their social gatherings, and daily life. They are magnificent and v. beautiful.

They also include some my personal favourites: Pieter de Hooch, Jan Steen, and Jan van der Heyden.

Rating: 10/10.

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A Musical Party by Pieter de Hooch (1675)

For those that follow my blog, Pieter de Hooch is an absolute personal favourite of mine among the Dutch masters.

For me, though, I think I prefer his earlier Delft works (focusing on simple, sunlit courtyards and modest hearty domestic life). His later Amsterdam paintings shifted toward high society, grander architecture, and wealthy patrons enjoying their leisurely time.

Here the painting is split between the music at the fore and the love/holding hands/kissing at the back. I love the two dogs playing at the fore too.

As ever, the atmosphere is beautifully captured with rich red curtains that filter and warm the incoming light. It even reflects off the marble tiled floor.

Me :)

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A Wedding Party by Jan Steen (1667)

Love it.

Jan Steen is antithesis of De Hooch.

Loud, chaotic, theatrical, and packed with brilliant Dutch wit.

He even paints himself at the fore leaning against a large wooden barrel, looking directly out at the viewer with a glazed smirk.

Jan Steen depicting himself.

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The Milkwoman by Nicolaes Maes (c. 1655-1657)

Wonderful.

Classic Maes with his distinctive vibrant colour saturation. 

Before he became famous for his genre scenes, he was Rembrandt’s star pupil in Amsterdam during the late 1640s. It’s obvious he inherited Rembrandt’s powerful chiaroscuro: the light directs the viewer’s eyes to the story here. A brilliant white light strikes the milkwoman’s crisp white sleeve and the open palm of her hand.

Milkmaids were often a flirtatious subject in Dutch art. Here, she is the embodiment of honest work and virtue.

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The Eavesdropper by Nicolaes Maes (1656)

What a lovely and v. famous painting. 😆

It’s amazing that Duke Wellington managed to get his hands on this painting.

The maid stands at the foot of a wooden staircase, making direct eye contact with us, holding a finger to her mouth in a classic “shh” gesture.

As ever, with Dutch art, trying to convey some high-brow moralism.

I love the smile. It’s like she’s trying not to giggle.

A kiss? A fondle?

It’s interesting the orange/white colours define both maids.

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The Château of Goudestein by Jan van der Heyden (1674)

Beautiful.

For me, Jan van der Heyden’s View of the Westerkerk, Amsterdam at the National Gallery is breathtaking in its meticulous, near-microscopic attention to detail.

This painting typifies the cultural phenomenon of 17th-century Dutch life: atristoractic country retreats.

Not only meticulous in landscape, but his sweeping blue skies with their soft drifting clouds, elegant swans etc.

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The Dissolute Household by Jan Steen (1668)

Famous painting by Jan Steen.

Prosperous bourgeois home turned upside down when people in charge completely abandon their duties.

A hanging basket, with monkeys.

 

A faithless husband, a slumbering mother, thieving children.

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The Courtyard of an Inn with a Game of Shuffleboard by Adriaen van Ostade (1677)

What a joy.

Charming, and radical for its day.

Jan Steen treated peasant-life like a raucous & theatrical comedy; Van Ostade depicted them with a sense of warmth & empathy.

Thus, ordinary peasant life depicted beautifully in Dutch art.

Hardworking man relaxing with his pipe lost in his thoughts

Kids playing next to him.

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A Village Scene by Jan Victors (1654)

A charming depiction of street life.

I have come across Jan Victors at the National Gallery in A Village Scene with a Cobbler (which is so beautiful) that I was pleased to come across his work again.

I love the camaraderie, the earnest facial expressions (Rembrandt?), and the joie-de-vivre sense of a summer’s evening. 

Wonderful find.

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The Intruder: A Lady at her Toilet, Surprised by Her Lover by Pieter de Hooch (1665)

Wow.

De Hooch’s treatment of light is just incredible. 

I love the way his luminous daylight pours into the room reflecting the textures of the silk garments and the polished wood.

In 1661, De Hooch had moved to Amsterdam, and his handling of light underwent a profound transformation, becoming noticeably darker & heavier, and more subdued. I really love his earlier domestic scenes of mothers peeling apples, or maids sweeping yards ...

In the 17th-century, a “toilette” referred to the practice of a lady getting dressed, styling her hair, and applying perfume etc... So, when her lover “intrudes” on her at her toilette, he is catching her in a highly private & vulnerable moment. He removes his hat politely.

The vibrant textures draw us in.

Deep blue skirt wrapped in a rich red fur-trimmed jacket.

His vibrant yellow doublet exquisitely rendered.

An intricately embroidered sash that glows.

 

Beautiful depth and layers via the doorkijkje.

Is the dog the moral admonition? 

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The Physician’s Visit by Jan Steen (c. 1660)

Another Jan Steen.

This painting is not about “illness” - the lady is lovesick, and, quite possibly, pregnant. As per ArtUK:

The girl in this painting is not ill but lovesick. To underline the point, there is a picture of ‘Venus and Adonis’ on the wall and the boy in the foreground is Cupid in seventeenth-century costume, putting an arrow in his bow. The doctor takes the woman’s pulse and looks knowingly at the maid, who is holding a urine bottle. Erotic melancholy was allegedly detected by feeling the pulse, whilst visual examination of the urine was claimed to reveal the same disorder, or pregnancy.

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Leftovers

Newly discovered copy of the US Declaration of Independence in London ✎

What great news.

The National Archives in London found a copy of the US Declaration of Independence.

According to the BBC, it seems many were printed and distributed across the colonies. Today, few are left:

The rare copy has undergone conservation works to stabilise its paper and repair a slight tear, making it safe for handling, study and future display.

It will go on display as part of Revolution 250: America’s Independence Story, 1763-1783 at The National Archives.

The National Archives already holds three of the original official copies of the Declaration of Independence printed by John Dunlap in Philadelphia on 4 July 1776.

Around 200 copies are likely to have been printed on the night, of which only 26 are known to have survived until today.

It is part of the National Archives “Revolution 250: America’s Independence Story 1763–1783” exhibition. Hopefully, I can go and see it in person.

A Bigger Splash by David Hockney (1967) ✎

In honour of David Hockney who recently passed away.

I really love the feeling of:

1. nostalgia and ephemerality of good-times (captured in the fleeting nature of a splash)

2. that warm sun-baked Californian palette of turquoise & flesh-toned pinks. They’re so relaxing and inviting. Hockney perfectly captured his own joy of Southern California.