The art connoisseur

My dog’s name is Saskia. Just now I was walking her across the street, and a woman who was crossing with me asked her name.  I told her "her name is Saskia" expecting the usual blank stare followed by "what?" But instead the woman had a quick retort, she said "that's not a suitable name for a dog. She should be named ‘happy’ or ‘joy’". So I told the woman that the original Saskia was the wife of a famous painter named Rembrandt, while at the same time considering that Saskia's life had probably not been all that happy or joyous.

As we continued on the sidewalk, the woman looked down at Saskia and told me she looked like one of his paintings. I was delighted at that, I think she's beautiful and that may be the highest praise she ever received from a stranger. I smiled and thanked the woman. - In retrospect I should have walked away at that moment in the conversation. -  The woman then looked at Saskia and said that her fur looked like his brush strokes. In my mind’s eye I tried unsuccessfully to picture Rembrandt’s brush strokes and conjured words like, precise, exact and flawless; then I looked at Saskia’s wispy, disheveled,  two-tone fur, then I looked back at the woman.  She might have noticed my confusion because when she continued she explained “picture his self portrait, the brush strokes are just like that”.  I thought of the Rembrandt portrait hanging in the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, and just as I was concluding that it wasn’t a self portrait, the woman continued.  “But not the one where he cut off his ear, I don’t like that one, it’s not happy”.




I shit you not! That actually happened to me today.