My first visit to the Netherlands was as a young man in the United States Navy. My ship put in to port at Rotterdam after a rough winter crossing of the North Atlantic. We were given liberty for several days and nights. Eschewing the dubious entertainments pursued by shipmates bound for Amsterdam's legendary Red Light District, I set off on my own for a walking tour of the famous old seaport. Eventually tiring in a picturesque residential area nearer the merchant's side of the port, I stopped at a small tavern for beer and a snack. The accommodating host was a retired merchant mariner who saw to it that I, once recognized as the seafaring sort, suffered neither thirst nor hunger a moment in his establishment. One excellent steak and chips dinner and at least a gallon of good dutch beer later, he provided an answer for my need of lodging in the form of an exceptionally clean and inexpensive bedroom upstairs. Stumbling out of my room in the middle of the night for the shared toilet, I was surprised in the hall by a matronly lady in a robe. Instead of quietly slipping into her room, within which I was able to see a toddler asleep on the bed, she threw open her robe, to my utter astonishment, smiling provocatively at me, displaying pendulous breasts and massive thighs. I declined with a slight shake of my head; she disappeared into her room. This painting, drawn from an image found while google-whacking for the Blue Art series, reminds me immediately of that moment in Rotterdam; my impression of a seductive Netherlandish home away from home, of absolute freedom and lustless seduction. A feeling evoked in me again by Dutch and Flemish painters, from Rembrandt onward, when in 2006 I toured their works in their native home, all somehow more free and seductive than their contemporaries. My arrangement of common architectural and domestic items juxtaposed with the exotic, bulbous, red and brass Bombay taxi horn hung with its trumpet mouth upturned, a veritable cornucopia, is meant as play on the Renaissance trompe-l'oeil style of painting, which by the time of Rembrandt had also become old-fashioned.