The Dogs in Dutch Paintings

A Short Vacation Post

Hello, dear readers! It’s spring break this week, so please enjoy this short post, and see you next week!

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Jan Steen, The Merry Family, 1668. Oil on canvas. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. I obtained this image from this delightful article, by Sophie Ploeg.

The Dogs in Dutch Paintings, by David Graham

How shall I not love them, snoozing

right through the Annunciation? They inhabit

the outskirts of every importance, sprawl

dead center in each oblivious household.

They’re digging at fleas or snapping at scraps,

dozing with noble abandon while a boy

bells their tails. Often they present their rumps

in the foreground of some martyrdom.

What Christ could lean so unconcernedly

against a table leg, the feast above continuing?

Could the Virgin in her joy match this grace

as a hound sagely ponders an upturned turtle?

No scholar at his huge book will capture

my eye so well as the skinny haunches,

the frazzled tails and serene optimism

of the least of these mutts, curled

in the corners of the world’s dazzlement.

Lynn, a mutt with a frazzled tail, curled in the corners of the world’s dazzlement, or just in the corner of the sofa.

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How about you, readers? Are you a dog person? Do you love Dutch paintings? Does ordinary life intrude on your celebrations, to everyone’s surprised delight? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

The Tidbit

Speaking of Dutch masters, let’s not forget music! “O Seigneur loué sera,” by Jan Sweelinck, is one of my favorite motets to perform and to hear performed. It was composed over four hundred years ago, and it really dances!