Interior of a pharmacy, with four figures. Oil painting by Jos. van Brée, 1860.

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<p>The artist was presumably a member of the same family as the better-known Mattheus Ignatius (1773-1839) and Philippe Jacob (1786-1871) Van Brée. The painting is similar to one by Philippe Jacob of the pharmacy of St Johns Hospital, Bruges, but here the secular elements are stressed: an old man and a woman are sitting down for a chat while the pharmacist and his apprentice are grinding up materia medica, presumably for the prescriptions of their waiting customers. However the furnishings and equipment are very similar to those in the Bruges painting: they seem to date from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries</p>

Interior of a pharmacy, with four figures. Oil painting by Jos. van Brée, 1860.

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