Interior with a surgeon and his apprentice attending to a patient. Oil painting by Jan Josef Horemans, 1722.

  • Horemans, Jan Josef, 1682-1759.
Date:
1722
Reference:
44992i
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view Interior with a surgeon and his apprentice attending to a patient. Oil painting by Jan Josef Horemans, 1722.

Contains: 1 image

Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

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Credit

Interior with a surgeon and his apprentice attending to a patient. Oil painting by Jan Josef Horemans, 1722. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). Source: Wellcome Collection.

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About this work

Description

Jan Josef Horemans was the leading painter of everyday life in Antwerp in the first half of the 18th century, and was master of the Antwerp painters' guild in 1706. With the aid of various tricks of composition, his pictures present a vivid account of episodes in private houses, inns and courtyards--in this case a surgeon's house to which a man has come to be treated. The surgeon, with his back to the viewer, takes charge of the case, while his apprentice, wearing a red jacket, starts work on the manual treatment of the patient. He makes an incision just below the right armpit of the patient, who reacts to express his pain. Could the surgeon be lancing the bubo of bubonic plague? On the right is an agitated woman, who may be either a distressed relative of the injured man or the next patient waiting her turn

Above right, shelves holding vessels which contain oils, balms and unguents for use in surgery. Over the door in the right background is a wall-mounted chest of surgical instruments. The good supply of equipment is explained by the fact that city surgeons were respectable and well-paid professionals, members of a guild who had passed through the stages of apprentice and journeyman to become a master surgeon. The calendar on the back wall is dated 1722, which is assumed to be the date of the painting

Publication/Creation

MDCCXXII [1722]

Physical description

1 painting : oil on canvas ; canvas 52.4 x 59.8 cm

Lettering

J. Horemans

References note

Christopher White and Charlotte Crawley,The Dutch and Flemish drawings of the fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, Cambridge 1994, no. 592 (related drawing)

Reference

Wellcome Collection 44992i

Reproduction note

Related drawing: Royal Collection, Windsor (White and Crawley, loc. cit.)

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