A woman examines another woman's sore eye, while a man and other women stand by. Oil painting after Louis-Léopold Boilly.

1 painting : oil on canvas ; sight 91.5 x 72.6 cm

The painting has a Spanish provenance and may be by a Spanish hand. The composition, here much enlarged, is that of one of Boilly's lithographs, no. 5 in the series called Grimaces. However, the man in the feathered hat facing rightwards at the top of the present painting is not shown in Boilly's lithograph: there the head of a boy or girl facing left appears instead. The man does not appear in exactly the same form in any of Boilly's other compositions, but a man with the same physiognomy but a different hat appears in the same position (i.e. top, facing right) in Boilly's lithograph 'Les fumeurs et les priseurs', also in the series Grimaces

Étienne Bréton and Pascal Zuber, Louis-Léopold Boilly, 1761-1845: le peintre de la société parisienne de Louis XVI à Louis-Philippe, Paris: Arthena, 2019, vol. II, pp. 878-879, no. 2045E (Les grimaces, no. 5)

Étienne Bréton and Pascal Zuber, Louis-Léopold Boilly, 1761-1845: le peintre de la société parisienne de Louis XVI à Louis-Philippe, Paris: Arthena, 2019, vol. I, p. 314, and vol. II, pp. 884-885, no. 2074E (Les fumeurs et les priseurs)

Wellcome Collection 44683i