A surgical operation. Oil painting attributed to Egbert van Heemskerck III.

A scene in an early 18th-century surgery. A male patient is seated in the centre receiving the attention of a kneeling operator. The patient is supported under the arms by a standing man, while another man approaches on the left with a cup containing a fortifying or anaesthetic drink. On the right is an armed and agitated crowd who are being pacified by a man in authority (physician or magistrate), suggesting a wound caused by violence. The men on the right resemble the group of law-keepers with staves entering with the magistrate Sir John Gonson on the right of Hogarth's A harlot's progress, plate 3 (1732)

The name of the surgeon "Fr Alexio" who is named in the inscription is not mentioned in Wallis's 18th century medics, suggests that he was an immigrant, perhaps from Antwerp, like the Van Aken brothers

[between 1730 and 1739?]

1 painting : oil on canvas ; canvas approximately 63.5 x 76 cm

Fr, Alexio, surgeon. Inscribed along the lower margin of the canvas "Fr, Alexio, surgeon.", in a manner similar to the names inscribed on shop signs. This picture is however painted on canvas, unlike suspended shop signs which are usually painted on wood. Possibly used for display in the bow window of a shop?

The costumes and style are typical of Netherlandish artists who worked in England in the 1730s, such as the Van Aken and Van Heemskerck families. There is a resemblance to a painting in Tate Britain attributed to Egbert van Heemskerck III, which shows the same discrepancies in the scale of the figures; the treatment of the back of the coat of a little boy in the foreground of the Tate picture is also very similar to the Wellcome picture. There are also similarities to painters in the circle of Joseph van Aken (1699-1749): of his obscurer brothers Arnold and Alexander van Aken, Arnold, the oldest of the three, died in 1735/1736 and was described by his contemporary George Vertue as "painter in oil of small figures, landscapes and conversations", though no signed pictures by him are recorded in British public collections

Wellcome Collection 661865i