Interior at the Cottage is by Luke Martineau (b1970) who frequently paints domestic subjects. It illustrates how, in so many ways, kitchens are timeless and unchanging; this one could be contemporary or from one of several centuries. 

Violet in the Kitchen (1995) by Hector McDonnell (b1947) encapsulates the way in which so much domestic and family life happens in the kitchen now that it is often no longer separate from the rest of the household. In the past, family portraits would not have been set in a kitchen, but now that it is where  homework, crafts, eating, reading, playing, and ever-changing tablescapes all take place, it has become a natural backdrop.

Alice Mumford (b1965) is based in Hayle near St Ives in Cornwall and not too far from Penzance and Newlyn; she often captures the lovely light there in her paintings of domestic subjects in the same way the Newlyn School artists did. While tables, ranges, and dressers have long been be included in kitchen interiors, new-fangled appliances such as dishwashers also have their own merits. They create spontaneous and ever-changing still lifes for Alice Mumford who says, "There are excellent dark shadows in the back of the dishwasher that contrast with the light falling on the variety of cups, saucers, mugs, plates, knives and forks. Its fiendishly difficult to paint as there is so much going on". This is Around Again (2025).

This week, for a change, we have paintings by contemporary artists, all of whom are inspired by what is often the hub, the heart, and the most-used room in the home: the kitchen. In the past, the majority of kitchen interiors featured staff, servants, cooks, and paid helps. But now that most people run their home without help, the kitchen is a timeless and ever-fascinating subject for both painters and viewers. This is A Corner of a Stockwell Kitchen (2023) by Eleanor Crow who recently had a selling exhibition at Town House Spitalfields.

Here we see two women reading their newspapers at a Lyon's Teashop on Piccadilly in London in a 1953 photograph by Bert Hardy for Picture Post. Sadly, newspapers are no longer provided for customers in British cafes (many European cafes continue to have national and  local papers, and what a joy this is) but readers still read and writers still write their books in cafes, just as Simone de Beauvoir et al did at the Café de Flore.