The Doctor (painting)
The Doctor (German: The Doctor) is a painting by the English painter Luke Fildes from 1887, which was first exhibited in 1891 at Tate Britain in London . Fildes' work The Doctor shows a doctor on a house call, how he watches over the sleeping sick child of an impoverished worker. This motif of a Victorian general practitioner is used to this day in almost every context to represent the qualities of a good and dedicated doctor.
This painting can be interpreted as the artist's wish for his art to capture something that he wished had happened to his own son in real life, but who died on a Christmas morning.
description
The central figure is the imposing male medic who watches his little patient attentively, while in the background the helpless father puts his hand on the shoulders of the tearful mother. The sick child's makeshift bed consists of two mismatched chairs pushed together. The interior of the poor hut corresponded to the status of a worker at the time.
The scene shows the doctor observing the "crisis" of the childhood disease , the critical stage at which the patient is no longer overwhelmed by the infection . The painter's skillful handling of light and perspective focuses the viewer's eye on the doctor, the patient and the relationship between them. The child's parents are almost irrelevant; the watchful father is disempowered by the presence of the expert, while the mother - collapsed into a stereotypical female role - accepts the assistance of the more powerful man.
The doctor's hand, on which he rests his chin, and the sick girl's hand dangling in the air, reveal the precarious nature of the illness and the recognition of the limits imposed by the illness. Fildes' painting shows some of the utensils the doctor used on his ambulance - a pestle and mortar, and a cup and spoon, which suggest that he may have made a potion or envelope for the sick child. There is no indication of the equipment that was commonly used at the time the image was created, such as B. a stethoscope or thermometer.
The picture is known to have been painted in Fildes' London studio, where he carefully recreated a cottage interior and the "Doctor" was a professional model, but presumably looked somewhat like Fildes himself.
Fildes himself is said to have said about his painting that dawn begins to steal its way through the window of the hut (dawn, which is the critical point in time for all fatal diseases) and with this the parents of the sick child take up hope again.
Origin of the subject
There are various guesses as to the origins of the painting. In 1890 Sir Henry Tate commissioned Luke Fildes for a painting, the subject of which was left to the painter's discretion. Fildes may therefore have been inspired by the death of his firstborn son Phillip, who died on Christmas morning 1877. The course of the disease was examined by a Dr. Murray, who impressed Fildes with the care and attention he gave to his dying child.
In another version, Queen Victoria commissioned the painting to commemorate the service of her own doctor, Sir James Clark, whom she is said to have sent to look after the sick child of a servant on the Balmoral estate.
Fildes' painting The Doctor may have been created in response to general public concerns about the rise in scientific medicine in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Up until the 18th century, doctors relied much of their diagnosis on what their patients told them, the physical exam being just taking heart rates and examining excretions.
rating
A more detailed assessment of Fildes' painting The Doctor reveals that in 1887 - at the time it was painted - it was a fictional and unlikely representation of medicine. However, Fildes' timeless painting reveals what is important in the picture: the relationship between the patient and the doctor and the value of a patient-centered approach.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Giorgio Bordin, Laura Polo D'Ambrosio: Medicine in Art . Getty Publications, 2010, ISBN 978-1-60606-044-5 , pp. 364 (English, google.de [accessed on August 12, 2020]).
- ^ A b Michael J. Balboni, Tracy A. Balboni: Hostility to Hospitality: Spirituality and Professional Socialization within Medicine . Oxford University Press, 2018, ISBN 978-0-19-932577-1 , pp. 3 (English, google.de [accessed on August 12, 2020]).
- ↑ Ann Goldman, Richard Hain, Stephen Liben: Oxford Textbook of Palliative Care for Children . Oxford University Press , 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-959510-5 , pp. 50 ( google.de [accessed on 23 August 2020]).
- ↑ a b Jane Moore: What Sir Luke Fildes' 1887 painting The Doctor can teach us about the practice of medicine today . In: The British Journal of General Practice . tape 58 , no. 548 , March 1, 2008, ISSN 0960-1643 , p. 210-213 , doi : 10.3399 / bjgp08X279571 , PMID 18318983 , PMC 2249807 (free full text).
