page_title: The Doctor (painting)
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: The Doctor (painting) / Origins
caption_attribution_description: Self-portrait Sir Samuel Luke Fildes RA (1843-1927)
context_page_description: The Doctor is an 1891 painting by Luke Fildes that depicts a Victorian doctor observing the critical stage in a child's illness while the parents gaze on helplessly from the periphery. It has been used to portray the values of the ideal physician and the inadequacies of the medical profession. Different theories exist as to the painting's origin but it is most likely based upon Fildes' own experience of the death of his son. Critics have noted that Fildes omitted common medical equipment of his era in order to focus on the relationship between physician and patient.
context_section_description: The painting was commissioned by Henry Tate in 1890 as a work of "social realism" on a topic of Fildes' choosing to be displayed in the National Gallery of British Art, now known as the Tate Gallery London. Fildes was paid £3,000 for the work, a sum he felt was too small for such a painting and less than he expected for painting portraits. Two Victorian doctors, Dr Thomas Buzzard (neurologist) and Dr Gustavus Murray (obstetrician), have been particularly associated with the painting, as has the genre of the period in which it was painted. Fildes had the particular desire "to put on record the status of the doctor in our time".
  Different theories exist as to the origins of the painting.
caption: Self-portrait, Luke Fildes, 1911. Royal Academy of Arts, London.
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