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| Title | A Medical Practitioner Examining a Urine Flask | |
| Alternative Title | The Water Doctor; The Village Doctor | |
| Collection | Wellcome Library | |
| Artist | After Teniers, David, II (Flemish painter, 1610-1690) Attributed to Bie, Cornelius de (Dutch artist, active 1621/2 - 1664) |
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| Date Earliest | possibly 1650 | |
| Date Latest | possibly 1750 | |
| Signed | yes | |
| Description | A medical practitioner is shown examining a urine flask. The examining of urine to obtain a diagnosis of a medical condition is the ancient art of uroscopy. This work is based on a painting known as The Village Doctor by David Teniers, the Younger, in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels. It is possible that it is by T. Cornelis de Bie, a painter who lived in Amsterdam from 1621/1622 to 1664 but who is best known as the author of Gulden Cabinet, a series of biographies and panegyrics on artists, sculptors and architects of the South Netherlandish schools of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is signed C. Debie. | |
| Current Accession Number | 44715i | |
| Former Accession Number | P 118/1947 | |
| Inscription | front ll 'C. DEBIE.' | |
| Subject | figure; everyday life; still life; interior | |
| Measurements | 20.2 x 28.6 cm cm (estimate) | |
| Material | oil on panel | |
| Acquisition Details | Purchased 1947. | |
| Provenance | Sale, Foster's, London, 16 April 1924, lot 141, as An Interior 'after Teniers' by 'G. Debie'. | |
| Principal Exhibitions | Netherlandish Paintings: A Small Exhibition in the Wellcome Library, Wellcome Library, 2003, nn. | |
| Publications | Netherlandish Paintings: A Small Exhibition in the Wellcome Library, Wellcome Library, 2003, nn, p. 2. | |
| Notes | There is an accession card for this under reference P 118/1947. This work might be one of a pair. The Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon, Munich and Leipzig 1992-, states that Cornelius de Bie was a painter who lived in Amsterdam from 1621-2 to 1664, and that he was the author of Het gulden cabinet. However, the article on the author of Het gulden cabinet in the Dictionary of Art gives quite different information, stating that he was a notary who practised in Lier near Antwerp and that he lived from 1627 to about 1711-15. The Amsterdam painter is documented as the master of J. H. Roos in or after 1647, see Burlington Magazine, November 2000, vol. 142, p. 706. His signature as shown in W. Bernt, Die Niederländischen Maler, vol. 1, Munich 1960, differs from that in the present painting. It is also different to those signed works in the Witt Library boxes of C. De bie. The artist is under B in the Witt. The painting may therefore be by one or neither of these 'C. de Bie's'. There are two other versions of this painting in the Wellcome Library, 44716i & 44717i. | |
| Rights Owner | (c) The Wellcome Trust | |
| Author | Dr Madeleine Korn | |