Cabinet picture

(Fried sometimes appears to believe that Caravaggio invented this type of painting, which in fact has been known in art history for many years as the cabinet picture, and whose origins predate Caravaggio by more than half a century.)

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg reorganises a different kind of cabinet Picture: JAMES MALONEY/ jm020409clegg-7

Peter Hain walks past the press, after he tendered his resignation from the Cabinet Picture: JOHNNY GREEN/PA; Liam Byrne; Tom Watson

The jewel like cabinet picture Peasants merrymaking outside an inn by Adriaen van Ostade, painted on panel and dated 1660, comes with a particularly distinguished provenance, including the Duchesse de Berry and the Rothschilds.

(1) As a consequence, the holdings of Dutch paintings reflect 18th century French taste--that is, a preference for small cabinet pictures of genre scenes executed in a highly finished manner, particularly by Gerrit Dou, Wouwermans, the Italianates and also Rembrandt.

This is the kind of judgment that interior decorators must administer daily, but it's strange and unfamiliar to see it exercised so gleefully by an artist with regard to her own easel paintings, especially given how close those paintings come to being tricked-out evocations of the very cabinet pictures that might have once graced an interior of this kind.

Afterwards there are essays covering: Murillo's devotional paintings; the Seville drawing academy of which the artist was one of the earliest presidents; Murillo's 'cabinet pictures' on stone, metal and wood; an examin ation of Murillo's technique as a painter; and a look at the collecting of his paintings round the world.

"Our point," Rishel writes, "is to open for investigation the qualities of consistency and constancy in [Goya's] work, of the private made public and the public made private, of its range and diversity" In the context of the show, the subjects, character, touch, palette, and mood of the pictures that the artist kept for himself are meant to serve as standards against which to measure the other works--the portraits, religious commissions, and even the prints and the fantastic little cabinet pictures that both introduce and follow the "private" Goyas in the Philadelphia installation.

Charles Robert Leslie was an Anglo-American genre painter who specialised in cabinet pictures on literary or historical themes, such as Sancho Panza in the Apartment of the Duchess (1843-44).

Patrick Snow watches as Geoff Atkinson rescues Harvey the bear from the display cabinet Pictures: JASON ROBERTS/jr020309teddy-2&3; Patrick and Harvey are reunited Code: jr020309teddy-4

His skill was as a painter of small figures, and most of his works are modest-sized cabinet pictures, which is one of the reasons why this huge and complex allegorical panel--over two metres wide--is so remarkable.

Here, too, were the last three great cabinet pictures from the distinguished collection of Enrico Fattorini--founder of the Grattan mail order empire.