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Picturing a World

Dutch interior, empty room

This is the painting I have a melancholy Jeanette copy in the Louvre after Edward has gone south to Dr. Aubanel’s sanatorium. It would obviously appeal to an artist who perceives empty rooms as “portraits without people.”

Samuel van Hoogstraten was a master of linear perspective. The impact of how he and his contemporaries looked at rooms can be seen in a recent post at the National Trust’s Treasure Hunt blog on Rudyard Kipling’s house, Batemans. It opens with a photographic view through doors to a room with a checkerboard floor. The same post displays a watercolor from 1904 that I’m sure Jeanette would like, though it seems to record a place more than a personality.

And if anyone wonders whether blogging has impact, please note that my guest blogger Mary Hamer made a comment on the previous Treasure Hunt post on Batemans, in which she alerted the National Trust to Lockwood Kipling’s involvement in decorating the house. The information has been incorporated into this one. Yea, Mary!
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