With white panelled walls, stylish
furniture and heavy plain curtains, they're only let down
by the bright Vietnamese paintings on some of the walls — not in
evidence in any of the shots on their website — which in our view should be reinstated in the souvenir shops along nearby Hang Gai and replaced with something more in keeping with the understated style of the rooms.
And just as some masterpieces (think of Shakespeare's plays «really» written
by Bacon) are dogged
by fancies that they were done
by someone else, so it has turned out to be with Goya and the Black Paintings: a Spanish
furniture historian, Juan José Junquera, recently created a brief flurry of headlines in Europe and America
by claiming - on no pictorial
evidence at all - that the Black Paintings were «really» done
by Goya's son Javier, a ne'er - do - much who may have been a painter - certainly his father called him that, if only in support of his application for a pension - but
by whom no attributable paintings exist.