Isn't is strange, if we pick up a girlie magazine which has pictures of nudes on every page - it's considered "naughty", yet if we stand in front of Rembrandt's Bathsheba, or any other nude painted by a great master - we call it art. There seems to be a categorical difference between a nude and a naked body.

Similarly, there seems to be a marked difference between saucy and suggestive images which could be considered rude and art depicting these moments as everyday images.

The exhibition of 17th century Dutch paintings: Scenes from Everyday Life, currently at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, has attracted double the amount of visitors normally expected at this time of the year, and they are still flooding in. The question is why? Is it because this superb collection of 25 oil paintings on loan from The Hague, has been written up by the national press as offering the rude bits of 17th century life? Or is it because they are such splendid paintings?

Perhaps it's a bit of both, for they are superbly executed, the brush work on some being so perfectly placed they have a photographic feel about them.

But there is a certain naughtiness about them too and some - such as Jan Steen's The Girl Eating Oysters -contain explicit sexual symbolism. This is seen through the luscious bloom of the girl's lips, the seductive way she appears to be offering an oyster to the onlooker, and the oyster itself - everybody knows what oysters are supposed to do for your sex life. Then there's Frank van Mieris the Elder's painting Teasing the Pet, which suggests that there is more than a just a mild flirtation going on between the couple.

Perhaps it would not be so suggestive if the puppy was not sitting on the woman's lap, but it is.

And what's more, the demure way the woman is pushing the man away and the smile on his face surely imply they both known what's actually going on.

Unwelcome News by Gerard ter Borch could be illustrating any number of things.

The news could be for the soldier who is being called back to fight, which would break up the liaison. But that's not all the picture is saying. The underlying story in this work seems to be linked with the closeness of the couple, the way they are sitting together on the floor, and the relaxed suggestion of intimacy.

This comes from the way the soldier is draping his arm round the woman, and the casual manner that she is relaxing on the floor and snuggling into him. As many critics have noted, this could easily be a modern couple sprawled in front of the television.

The main question being: have they just made love, were they just about to, or are they just getting to know each other?

Gerard ter Borch also painted Woman Writing a Letter. The concentration on her face suggests it is a very intimate letter, to a lover perhaps, rather than a note to her aunt. There is also Jan Miense Molenaer's interpretation of the five senses, which examines the raw nature of these functions through the demon drink.

These are great works, depicting sight through the glimpse of an empty vessel, sound through drunken singing at what appears to be the end of a very liquid evening and taste through the drinking of beer.

Smell is the really naughty one which Jan Miense Molenaer has conveyed through the pungent odours of a baby's bottom, not the image you automatically associate with an art gallery.

Why didn't Jan Miense Molenaer illustrate smell though the aroma of freshly baked bread, flowers on the table, or the heady delights of a glass of wine when captured by the nostrils just seconds before that first sip? Why use a dirty baby's bottom to symbolise this sense? Perhaps we will never know. It is up to us to look at the pictures and speculate.

Their strength comes from the subject matter.

From the fact that these works highlight and celebrate life of the ordinary man, rather than the town dignitaries, who were accustomed to their portraits being painted in grand and classical style.

As Dr Christopher Brown, director of the Ashmolean points out in the exhibition catalogue, genre paintings such as these were a popular art which developed in response to the demands of the tradesmen who adorned their houses with them. Dr Brown quotes the English 17th century traveller Peter Mundy who noticed pictures hanging in unlikely places like blacksmiths' forges and on cobblers' stalls. He says that this new art-buying public demanded paintings which were modestly priced and showed familiar objects.

Few of them were classically educated and the majority had little desire to have scenes from Roman history or Greek mythology on their walls.

They preferred landscapes and scenes from everyday life.

It seems, therefore, that the paintings in this collection are simply snapshots of the times in which they were created and should be viewed as such. Dr Brown is delighted with the public's response to the selection of paintings on show.

He them out picked personally from what he considers to be one of the best collections of Dutch paintings in the Netherlands.

He says: "It's exactly the sort of display - not too large - yet thought provoking, in which the Ashmolean excels." Because of the popularity of this exhibition, Dr Brown has arranged special Christmas opening hours on days when the museum would normally be closed, to give even more people an opportunity to see the works for themselves, before they are returned to The Hague.

The museum will now be open on Monday, December 27 and Tuesday, December 28, from 10am to 5pm and also Sunday, January 2, from 2pm to 5pm and Monday, January 3, from 10am to 5pm.

The exhibition will remain on display until Sunday, January 9.

Story date: Saturday 18 December

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.