Terms and Conditions
The artist, title and date of the work must be listed anywhere the image is reproduced:
Jan Steen
The village surgeon (c. 1653)
oil on on wood panel
29.3 × 24.5 cm
Bequest of Robert Victor Jones, 2026
Photo: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
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About this work
Born into a family of brewers in Leiden, Southern Holland, Jan Steen became an assistant to the landscape and marine painter Jan van Goyen, whose daughter he married in 1649. The influence of another of his early teachers, Adriaen van Ostade, who specialised in painting scenes of daily life, can be seen in this lively depiction of a rural surgeon who appears to be
peeling skin from the leg of a protesting villager. This is an early work, made before Steen developed a more fijnschilder (fine painting) style. It is close in manner to Steen’s Country Doctor c. 1653 in The Leiden Collection, which features the same taxidermized crocodile in the background.