Yesterday I had time to spare, so I cadged a ride to The Hague to visit the Mauritshuis. Which is a repository for a lot of Golden Age goodies like Vermeer’s Girl with a pearl earring and Fabritius’s Goldfinch  and Potters the Steer, all paintings that are etched on my brain but that I’d never seen in real life. Worth a visit to check on these, and a lot of other good stuff. A lot of boring stuff, too – paintings in large numbers sort of crowd me.

Kids in their red pinafores cheered me up:  the idea of a Kunstwerkplaats – an Art Workplace –  the idea that art isn’t all dead and hung on a wall.

Below the Kunstwerkplaats my favourite items of the day – the ostrich from The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man by Brueghel and Rubens; The Interior of the Cunerakerk in Rhenen by – who else – Saenredam; a detail from the Ice Scene by Hendrick Avercamp and a flower from the Vase of Flowers by Jan Davidsz de Heem.