Laura Freeman Laura Freeman

Look beyond ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ in The Hague

Holland’s most painterly city is beautiful in autumn

What a fate it is to be hung next to the most famous painting in a gallery. To be overlooked, a framing device, just out of shot of every selfie taken in front of ‘The Ambassadors’ or ‘Mona Lisa’.

The painting immediately to the left of Johannes Vermeer’s ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ in the Mauritshuis is Gerard ter Borch’s ‘Combing for Lice’. The weary mother in this close interior has none of the pouty lusciousness of Vermeer’s pin-up, but no Madonna ever cradled her bambino with as much maternal tenderness as this Dutch huisvrouw inspects her son’s blond head.

Thanks to Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring and Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, all most visitors want from the Mauritshuis is Vermeer and Carel Fabritius. His ‘Goldfinch’ is a funny little thing, with a beak like a Toblerone triangle and dusty plumage. Tick those two off your list first, then spend your visit with Jan Steen’s ‘Oyster Girl’ — how daintily she sprinkles her salt, how conspiratorial her half-smile — or Frans van Mieris’s ‘Teasing the Pet’, a portrait of a poor, pained spaniel puppy having his ear tugged. Once you have finished with the fijnschilders — the fine painters — on the first floor, play spot-the-guinea-pigs in Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens’s ‘Garden of Eden’.

The Hague is a painterly city. The dark, patterned brickwork of the surviving 17th-century townhouses have the heavy impastoed texture of a Rembrandt. They are particularly appealing in low autumn sun. Now red, now golden, now tanner’s brown, now black.

The streets follow the shape of what were once sand dunes, wiggling through the city in no great hurry to be anywhere.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in