The Doctor’s Visit

Media - 1956.11.50 - SAAM-1956.11.50_1 - 63290
Copied Jan Steen, The Doctor's Visit, 17th century, oil on canvas, 21 1424 14 in. (54.061.6 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Mabel Johnson Langhorne, 1956.11.50
Free to use

Artwork Details

Title
The Doctor’s Visit
Artist
Follower of Jan Steen
Date
17th century
Dimensions
21 1424 14 in. (54.061.6 cm.)
Credit Line
Bequest of Mabel Johnson Langhorne
Mediums
Mediums Description
oil on canvas
Classifications
Keywords
  • Figure group
  • Occupation — medicine — doctor
  • Dutch
  • State of being — illness — foot malady
  • Architecture Interior — domestic — bedroom
Object Number
1956.11.50

Artwork Description

This scene was likely made by a follower of the seventeenth-century Dutch painter Jan Steen, who painted a similar image of a woman being treated for lovesickness by a quack doctor. Steen’s paintings, copies of them, and works by his followers were popular on the American art market in the late nineteenth century. They appealed to collectors of various backgrounds, from lawyers like Ralph Cross Johnson to senators and financiers. Many of these patrons believed that the Dutch Republic was the source of American political ideals, a connection popularized through two best-selling books by nineteenth-century American historian John Lothrop Motley, who couched the Dutch struggle for independence in terms of the American Revolution. (Stott, Holland Mania: The Unknown Dutch Period in American Art & Culture, 1998)