Samuel van Hoogstraten, Dutch
“Go On, Boy. You Know the Rules. We Don’t Do Our Business INside the Painting,” ca. 1670
Oil on canvas
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Info, or perhaps links that point to more info, about this artist can be found here, here, here, here (can be read in full for free on Fridays), here, here (archived, if necessary), here, here, and here, perhaps in addition to what’s in his Wikipedia page (Google translated French Wikipedia page has more).
Perspective View with a Woman Reading a Letter
/// This young Woman cannot be objective—
what she’s Reading is filled with invective.
In this Letter she’s cursed—
although he cheated first.
What she needs is a View with Perspective.
/// When he left her he left her this “joint.”
Got a new home and wife to anoint.
This palatial estate
was her fortunate fate
when her ex hit the vanishing point.
/// Now he writes of how ill he’s been treated.
How his new wife, within weeks, had cheated.
On the grounds he’d been gulled
he would have it annulled.
She must let him return, he repeated.
/// His letter explained he has debts
due to lavish expense and bad bets.
But his plea to come back
was a vicious attack
on his first wife with not-so-veiled threats.
/// When she wed she’d been young— unreflective,
and her instincts were green— ineffective.
To determine the truth
Beatrix hired a sleuth.
Hubby’s sins were bared by a detective.
/// There’s a cell ‘neath the stairs, (not so wide),
and her husband would lock her inside.
The round window is barred.
On the floor, cold and hard,
where she slept, to her pets she’d confide.
/// With vile threats and with pain she’d been trained:
she would rue any day she complained.
All the servants were paid
to keep Beatrix afraid.
No one helped her when she was restrained.
/// Beatrix stifled all thought and emotion.
To her husband she showed just devotion.
So the sadist grew bored
and her freedom restored.
A new bride to torment was his notion.
/// Pulling strings with a judge he employed,
his first marriage was deemed null and void.
His next wife soon proved trouble—
in her nature, his double.
By a more monstrous mate he’s destroyed.
/// Beatrix’ faithful dog guards and precedes
her downstairs as she silently reads.
Her cat keeps to the rear,
sensing fury is near.
Beatrix relives her husband’s vile deeds.
/// “So, he thinks that I’m eager to learn
that to me he’ll ‘agree’ to return,
but I must beg him. So,
I’ll tell him where to go—
to the pit where he’ll ceaselessly burn!”
/// Hoogstraten tells women he meets
that his true talent lies ‘tween the sheets.
His perplexing last name
from the Dutch language came
and it translates to “by the high streets.”
/// Her alert dog, whose nickname is “Gus,”
will at one false move raise up a fuss.
So she needn’t look up
past her vigilant pup,
he suspiciously stares straight at us.
/// The dog knows that this whole place is his.
Other canines stay out of his biz.
He will go to the park
where he finds trees to mark,
but indoors he will not take a whiz.