Woman smoking a water pipe

How to Spend Some Downtime

Listen to music or take a relaxed bath. Catch up with loved ones over a meal and drinks. Maybe take in a dance performance or a fireworks display. Better yet, recharge in solitude or look at some art. Such activities, as the paintings on display here show, have long been popular ways to spend leisure moments. In today’s fast-paced world, they are ever more necessary for refreshing the spirit.

Several paintings in this selection were originally bound in books, whose stories in prose or verse and their accompanying illustrations were intended to inspire, entertain, or educate. Others were made as independent artworks, which were exchanged as special gifts and sometimes compiled in albums, to be enjoyed in the company of friends or in quiet contemplation.

We never seem to have enough spare time these days, and, when we do, there are too many choices for how we can meaningfully fill it. For some people—like the original patrons of these paintings, and you, who are reading this on the walls of an art museum, perhaps on your day off work—making and viewing art holds the power to revitalize and to nourish the imagination.