The Persevering Surgeon
Reproduction
Object numberRCSSC/P 379
CollectionSpecial collections
CategoryVisual works
Object namePen-and-wash drawings, Caricatures (visual works)
TitleThe Persevering Surgeon
DescriptionDrawing of a surgeon dissecting the body of a woman, by Thomas Rowlandson, unsigned, late 18th century.
A man dressed in an apron and wearing sleeve covers sits on a stool, leaning forward over a semi-naked young female corpse which lies on a trestle table. The woman's head is turned back and her right arm hangs down the side of the trestle; her breasts are exposed. The surgeon holds a pointed knife in his right hand, with the blade directed upwards; his left hand is reaching forward with the fingertips resting on her skin just below her right breast. The scene is a small room, with shelves containing preserved specimens in jars on the left, a closed door to the rear with bookshelves adjoining it, and on the right a human skeleton suspended from the ceiling. At the top of the picture is a skeleton of a dog, hanging above the door. At the man's feet sits a wooden tub.
This drawing is one of several made by Rowlandson depicting anatomists. It is undated, but was probably made in the 1780s, at about the same time that Rowlandson produced his drawing of a group of students and teachers at work in a dissecting room (see related records). Some elements are common to both, notably the skeleton of the dog, the details of the anatomist's clothes and the wooden tub for entrails. However, unlike the group scene this drawing also has strong overtones of voyeurism and eroticism, and plays on a recurrent theme in 18th-century literature and reportage that associated dissection - and particularly the dissection of women's bodies, conducted in private settings - with sexual depravity and the 'solitary vice' of masturbation.
The drawing does not appear to have been engraved.
Production date 1780 - 1790
purchased
Related objectsRCSSC/P 297
Physical Location
LocationNot on public display: contact museum for access conditions
Physical Information
Physical descriptionPen and wash on paper, 24cm by 22.5cm, in glazed frame, 42 by 44.5 cm.
