Studio of Jan Havicksz. Steen

Gerret Braamcamp, his sale, Amsterdam, Van der Schley, 31 July 1771, lot 213, for 310 florins, to Maclaine;
Baron E. de Beurnonville, Paris, Féral, 9 May 1881, lot 487;
Sir Joseph B. Robinson Bart., South Africa;
His sale, London, Christie's, 6 July 1923, lot 89, for £500 to Grael;
With Leonard Koetser, London, from whom purchased by Mr. Court on 4 May 1970.

C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the 17th Century, London 1907, vol. I, p. 57, no. 168;
K. Braun, Jan Steen, Rotterdam, 1980, p. 132, cat. no. 317 (as Jan Steen, datable to 1668-70).

The composition is known in another version in the Torrie Collection at the University of Edinburgh, usually exhibited at the Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh. Both compositions closely relate to a painting of the same subject in The Mauritshuis, The Hague, inv. no. 168 (reproduced in colour in Braun, see Literature, p. 66, cat. no. 318) datable to circa 1668-70. Both Hofstede de Groot (in Oud Holland, 1893, p. 129) and Braun ( Braun op. cit., p. 132, cat. nos 317 and 318) considered this painting to be the prime original and the Torrie version to be a copy, but more recently it has been suggested that the latter may be Steen's original.

The Doctor’s Visit, one of Steen’s favourite subjects, allowed him to parody a contemporary social disease that seemed to affect large numbers of Dutch women at that time - that of love-sickness. While Steen was not the first artist to focus on the subject, he was certainly the most prolific and successful in conveying both its humour and its pathos.  At first glance, the painting appears to represent nothing more than an episode from everyday life; a doctor pays a visit to a patient. The young girl appears to be in the throes of fever until we realise that she is sick with love; her lover can just be seen through the window in the background. The doctor holds a glass of wine in his hand; a cure for lovesickness. The moral is made more obvious by the picture on the rear wall illustrating the scene from Ovid which depicts the tragic story of Venus and Adonis. Steen characteristically includes the same painting and frame in another version of 'The Doctor's Visit' , property of the Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum, exhibited at the Wellington Museum, Apsley House, London and again in reverse in the painting offered at Christie's, London, 8th July 1994, lot 60.