With a facial expression bordering on demonic pleasure, a country doctor has grabbed his patient’s hair to steady his head while aiming a small spatula toward the man’s open mouth (fig 1).1 The farmer’s physical and emotional anguish is evident in every aspect of his being, from his protruding tongue and open eyes, to his tight grip on the chair knob and the handle of his egg basket, to his raised right leg. Peering down at the patient’s pained face is his deeply concerned wife, who clasps her hands close to her chest. Meanwhile, a young boy, clearly the doctor’s accomplice, kneels near the chair to steal eggs from the farmer’s basket and money from the leather pouch tied to his waist.2
Unlike itinerant charlatans, or quacksalvers (from which the term “quack” derives), who frequented Dutch village fairs to hawk dubious medical remedies, Steen’s country doctor works within his home. He would have been known to his community as the local barber-surgeon, which lent him a degree of respectability. He wears a soft red-brown cap comparable to those worn in Steen’s other paintings of barber-surgeons (fig 2), as well as those by his contemporaries, including Rembrandt van Rijn, as seen in an early painting in The Leiden Collection that belongs to a series depicting the five senses: Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch) (fig 3).
The neighbors of Steen’s country doctor would have come to this barber-surgeon in hopes that he could cure a wide range of ailments, real or imagined, through dental work, lockjaw treatment, bloodletting, and stone removal, in addition to performing various cosmetic procedures, shaves, and haircuts. The large brush lying on the floor in the left foreground, for example, reflects his role as a barber, and a variety of vessels and containers related to his multifaceted profession are stored on the wooden shelves at the left. Rembrandt’s Unconscious Patient (Allegory of Smell) (fig 4) includes a similar cabinet filled with knives, scissors, razors, and other instruments that could be used for oral surgery.3
The specific procedure that the barber-surgeon undertakes in Steen’s small painting is not certain. Although the work is traditionally titled The Tooth-Puller, the barber-surgeon’s forward-thrusting body language suggests that he is not extracting a tooth.4 Rather, he appears to be positioning his patient’s open mouth to force-feed him a dose of medicine. Two white dabs of paint on the metal spatula aimed toward the farmer’s mouth suggest that he is receiving some tablets (fig 1).5 The medicine was probably stored in one of the jars in the shelving unit and could have been heated in the earthenware brazier on the table. The patient may have had a medical condition—perhaps the dreaded tetanus, or lockjaw—that required forcing his mouth open for treatment or feeding.
Here, as is characteristic of Steen’s numerous depictions of gullible patients being deceived by charlatans, the farmer and his wife are uneducated peasants. One can imagine that they have just arrived at the doctor’s office in urgent need of help. The farmer’s hat, walking stick, and clay pipe lie randomly on the floor, as though tossed aside in a hurry. The presence of the young thieving accomplice further indicates that this barber-surgeon preyed on the near-sightedness and distractions of his patients during times of crisis. Dentists had a particularly dismal reputation, as the saying “He lies like a tooth-puller” attests.6
Judging by the finely crafted cittern hanging on the rear wall of his office and the well-maintained room beyond, with its leaded windows, this barber-surgeon seems to have been financially successful.7 Suspended from the ceiling of his office, which is separated from his living quarters by a blue cloth hanging from a rope, are three quite costly taxidermized animals: a small crocodile, an anteater, and a barely distinguishable turtle hanging in the arched passageway leading to the back room. While such exotic creatures are often found in Dutch representations of alchemists, apothecaries, and barber-surgeons, including Steen’s The Village Doctor (fig 2), the Leiden Collection painting also includes a stuffed owl atop the cabinet at the left. Steen likely included the owl, which is visible to the viewer, though not to the patient, because of its visual and thematic connections to an emblem in a popular emblem book, Sinnepoppen (Amsterdam, 1614), by the Dutch poet Roemer Visscher (1547–1620).8 The owl emblem emphasizes the importance of being able to perceive reality and to distinguish between what is true and not true (fig 5).
In exploring the theme of the sham healer (dentist, surgeon, stonecutter, or quack) and the gullible patient, Steen drew on a tradition that began in the fifteenth century, exemplified by works such as The Extraction of the Stone of Madness by Hieronymus Bosch (ca. 1450–1516) (fig 6). As Paul Vandenbroeck noted, this painting “marks the beginning of sixteenth-century folly iconography.”9 The earliest significant depiction of a dentist in Dutch visual arts is a 1523 engraving by Lucas van Leyden (1494–1533) (fig 7). The subject of sham dentists appealed to a number of Dutch and Flemish artists from the first half of the seventeenth century, particularly those who featured peasant genre scenes in their work, including Adriaen Brouwer (1605/6–38), Jan Miense Molenaer (1610–68), and the brothers Adriaen (1610–85) and Isaac van Ostade (1621–49).10 Country Doctor may not depict a tooth extraction, yet, as its traditional title suggests, it shares a close affinity with works depicting dental procedures. Visual motifs that specifically relate to Steen’s Country Doctor also appear in paintings by other Dutch artists, including Gerrit Dou (1613–75), who, around 1635, depicted a dentist extracting a tooth from a seated peasant, beside whom lie a basket of eggs and a walking stick (fig 8).11
Throughout his career, Steen adapted motifs from other artists’ prints as well as their paintings in his own works. For example, he likely knew the etching of a tooth-puller by the printmaker Jan Gillisz van Vliet (1605–68), which includes a basket of eggs but also, deep in the shadows, a figure “inspecting” the farmer’s purse (fig 9). A particularly intriguing connection also exists with the slightly later print of a tooth-puller (The Sense of Touch, part of a series of the five senses) that Jan Both (ca. 1618–52) made after a painting by his brother Andries (ca. 1612–41) (fig 10). In this reversed image, one sees similarly posed figures of the patient and his hand-wringing wife.12
Steen’s humor is remarkable in that the pictorial sources that he drew upon for his scenes of daily life often strike modern viewers as anything but funny, even though they would have been considered humorous in their time. Steen’s own imagery is never mean-spirited, and one smiles rather than grimaces at the human foibles he depicts. He had a unique ability to lighten the mood with exaggerated facial expressions, poses, and gestures that are brought to life through the fluidity of his painterly touch. Like the director of a small theatrical group, Steen carefully orchestrated his settings and props to reinforce the everyday dramas played out by his actors. In his paintings such as Country Doctor, where dim-witted rustics are tricked by barber-surgeons or quacksalvers, Steen clearly intended to amuse, but he did so in a way that evokes a certain sympathy for all involved, both deceiver and deceived.