The Mauritshuis

The Mauritshuis, Den Haag

This morning, for the first time, I caught the direct train from London to Rotterdam. On the plus side, I didn’t have to change trains in Brussels. On the negative side, the train was very busy with Amsterdam mini-breakers. (I, of course, am a discerning traveller.) Since I shall be seeing lots of Rotterdam in the next three days (and I have an excellent view of the Sonneveld House from my hotel room), I decided to catch the train to Den Haag to visit the Mauritshuis.

It’s compact in size and scope, which suited me just fine: Northern European art from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries housed on two floors in a perfectly symmetrical mansion which is interesting in its own right. There was a special exhibition of Rembrandts, where it was instructive to see how the experts have dithered over the last hundred years or more about which paintings are definitely by Rembrandt.

The Vermeer apart (there are actually three: I hadn’t noticed Diana and her nymphs on my previous visit), here are my highlights. They’re not all chosen for aesthetic reasons: I noted Potter’s bull because the painting is the size of a wall and I just went, “Why?!” The Beuckelaer reminded me of Hull and it amused me that the dead birds were ten times the size of Christ, and the drops of water on Hulsdonck’s floral still life were just exquisite.