| The Quack Doctor | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Gerrit Dou |
| Year | 1652 |
| Medium | Oil on panel |
| Dimensions | 112.4 cm× 83.4 cm(44.3 in× 32.8 in) |
| Location | Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam |
The Quack Doctor is an oil on panel painting by the Dutch artist Gerrit Dou from 1652. It is held at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, in Rotterdam.
It depicts a crowd gathered around a quack doctor as he promotes his wares. Dou also paints himself leaning out the window with a palette in hand. By including himself in the composition, he contrasts the deceptions involved in painting with those of quack medicine. For Dou, the composition was a departure; he was known for niche pieces, which depict an interior framed by a window. The painting has been written about quite extensively and is among the best-known treatments of its subject. [1]
Scenes of quack doctors (kwakzolvers) represented folly and were a common topic in Dutch genre painting, by artists such as Jan Steen, Jan Victors, and Jan Miense Molenaer. Genre scenes of kwaksolvers might depict them performing surgery to the legs, feet, or head (removing the "stone of folly"), extracting teeth, and offering patent medicines.
The painting's symbolism confirms the futility of the quack's offerings. The people are portrayed as gullible, except for those who mirror the quack's deceit: the boy at far right picks the pocket of a woman, and another boy lures a bird. The painting's details would be familiar to its audience from emblem books or proverbs. A woman wiping her child's bottom alludes to the nature of the quack's offerings. She is a seller of pancakes, which sound when cooking like the chatter of the mountebank. His oversized diploma would be seen as fake. The scene takes place during a fair, when laws and guild regulations were loosened, and outside merchants had the freedom to sell their wares. The fair is announced by the poster at right, and the man carrying a dead hare shows the loosening of hunting laws. [2]
Dou's picture is a large work for him, perhaps indicating its importance to the artist. [3] The location can be determined by the town gate, windmill, and bridge in the background: this is Dou's studio in Galgewater, Leiden. The setting highlights Dou's intent to compare the deceptions of the painter, imitator of reality, with those of the quack. [2] Dou may be comforting his higher-class audience by suggesting that they are above the pictured fray, or he may be expressing reservations about his own occupation's use of deception. Dou was an excellent trompe-l'œil painter. The composition includes a living tree and a dead tree—a familiar motif of choice—perhaps implying that only the artistic use of deceit is morally permissible.
Jan Havickszoon Steen was a Dutch Golden Age painter, one of the leading genre painters of the 17th century. His works are known for their psychological insight, sense of humour and abundance of colour.
Gerrit Dou, also known as GerardDouw or Dow, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, whose small, highly polished paintings are typical of the Leiden fijnschilders. He specialised in genre scenes and is noted for his trompe-l'œil "niche" paintings and candlelit night-scenes with strong chiaroscuro. He was a student of Rembrandt.
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Municipal Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is an art museum in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The name of the museum is derived from the two most important collectors of Frans Jacob Otto Boijmans and Daniël George van Beuningen. It is located at the Museumpark in the district Rotterdam Centrum, close to the Kunsthal and the Natural History Museum.
Dutch Golden Age painting is the painting of the Dutch Golden Age, a period in Dutch history roughly spanning the 17th century, during and after the later part of the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) for Dutch independence.
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Jan Miense Molenaer, was a Dutch Golden Age genre painter whose style was a precursor to Jan Steen's work during Dutch Golden Age painting. He shared a studio with his wife, Judith Leyster, also a genre painter, as well as a portraitist and painter of still-life. Both Molenaer and Leyster may have been pupils of Frans Hals.
The Fijnschilders, also called the Leiden Fijnschilders, were Dutch Golden Age painters who, from about 1630 to 1710, strove to create as natural a reproduction of reality as possible in their meticulously executed, often small-scale works.
Balthasar van den Bossche (1681–1715) was a Flemish painter who is mainly known for his wide range of genre subjects and occasional portraits.
Jan Frans van Dael or Jean-François van Dael was a Flemish painter and lithographer specializing in still lifes of flowers and fruit. He had a successful career in Paris where his patrons included the Empresses of Empire France as well as the kings of Restoration France. His work stands in the Flemish and Dutch tradition of flower painting with a sober composition and attention to detail to which he added a French-inspired decorative monumentality.
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Merry company is the term in art history for a painting, usually from the 17th century, showing a small group of people enjoying themselves, usually seated with drinks, and often music-making. These scenes are a very common type of genre painting of the Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque; it is estimated that nearly two thirds of Dutch genre scenes show people drinking.
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The Oyster Eater or Girl Offering Oysters, is a c.1658-1660 small oil on panel painting by Jan Steen. Since 1936, it has been in the collection of the Mauritshuis in the Hague. This is a genre painting that demonstrates Steen's more intricate style and use of domestic settings. It also shows Steen's use of symbolism with oysters to create a theme of earthly lust.
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