What we know

Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667)
Man writing a letter, 1664-65
Oil on panel, 53 x 40 cm
National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

A refined, foppishly dressed, golden-haired young man writes a letter. His face is expressionless, but concentrated on the business of writing. This picture has a pendant, Woman reading a letter, so he is writing that letter. In the background, there is a landscape, which seems to bear no relevance to what is going on, the kind of stuff nobody minds or notices. The letter-writing is the only thing going on in this picture. Even if we could read the letter, we would have no idea what it meant. Any face the young man made would not give that secret away. The elegance of the man's dress and his casual pose might make you distrust him, but that evidence too is merely circumstantial. The picture is "unreadable". Watching the scene, in the act of looking at it, we realise we can have no idea what goes on, in writing, in life. It makes the painting a peculiar piece of literary criticism.

Dutch materialism. This is in all the art-historical books, but it is worth wringing it out of them in reference to this picture. The art-history books concentrate on the Dutch reverence for, as Derek Mahon puts it, "the chaste / Perfection of the thing, and the thing made". The table-mat, the tile-floor, the bulbous thing on the table, even the young man's clothes, even the pen and paper, all seem simply to be what there is. But the writing gives the lie to that. It says one thing, but does it mean another? Meantime, look.

Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667)

Woman reading a letter, 1664-65

Oil on panel, 53 x 40 cm

National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

A domestic comedy. That ridiculous dog. The woman smiles, liking what she reads. The seascape painting, outlandishly, but nevertheless easily, symbolising the difficulties of love. This is what we know.

Looking at pretty pictures!

It's rainy in town and coffee is now €2.70. (The rule is: you're only allowed to complain about price rises once; after that, it makes sense to fork out cheerily.) So go to a gallery. The great (dry, relatively inexpensive) joy of Dublin in the past few months has been the three top-class exhibitions in the National Gallery, the Hugh Lane and the Chester Beatty Library.

The National Gallery exhibition, now over, was Impressionist Interiors, thereby smoothly catering to the main cultural interests of the middle classes who go to this kind of thing: Impressionism and Interiors. Some of the paintings that were supposed to be there never made it (lost in the post). And it could just as easily been called Degas and Friends. But that is no complaint. My angle here is just to reproduce the experience of dawdling through the rooms and stopping and staring, and thinking, idly. I also want to help the middle classes who go to this kind of thing. Many of them look at the gobbets of prose to the right of the picture and move on as though it was a treasure hunt. Relieved to be in the world of moveable type (such as you might find in a newspaper), they don't know that the thing to do is have a look.


Right, this, by Degas, did not appear at the exhibition, but it's very similar to one that did. Same pose, same light. As my art history teacher said: "It's alright to enjoy this, she's there for the scopic... taking!" What's great about Degas' nudes is that he gets the essentials: bums and breasts. As the middle classes say in galleries: "Very modern, in that sense."

This is Marxism! The maid carrying the basket and the well-off man are caught in the economic Real, therefore, they are painted in hard classicist colours. The well-dressed woman and her child can afford to be sentimenalised, therefore, they are painted in pleasure-giving Impressionist light. Don't be afraid, though, it is a beautiful picture.

Well, that's enough looking at pictures for today! Do go to the Hugh Lane show and the Chester Beatty show of Rembrandt prints. They're great.