<i>The Dutch Chymist</i>
date: label: date made
content: ca 1750
notes: label: Description
content: Engraved image of a chemist (or alchemist) sitting before a table, stirring a small pot on a fire. Two men in the background are reading a paper, perhaps a recipe. A woman, with a cloth over her face and a child in her arms, looks up toward empty money bags hanging from a string, in front of an inflated bladder, a reference to delusion. The inscriptions read: “J. Stein pinxt” and “J. Boydell Sculpt” and “Engraved from the Original Picture in the Collection of Mr. Leviez.”
label: Description
content: Jan Steen (about 1626-1679) was a prolific Dutch genre painter with a keen sense of humor. His oil painting, “The Village Alchemist,” done in the 1660s, is now in the Wallace Collection, London.
label: Description
content: John Boydell was a prominent engraver and print publisher in London who began in business in 1746 and specialized in reproductive prints. His biographer’s claim that he had all but discontinued producing plates himself by 1760 suggests that this image dates from around mid-century. The National Museum of Science and Industry in London dates this to 1780s, as do other sources.
label: Description
content: Charles Leviez was a dancing master in London. Another Leviez was a print seller in Paris.
label: Description
content: Ref: John Inganell, <i>The Wallace Collection: Dutch and Flemish</i> (London, 1992), pp. 359-360.
label: Description
content: Sven Bruntjen, <i>John Boydell (1719-1804). A Study of Art Patronage and Publishing in Georgian England</i> (New York, 1985).
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United Kingdom: England, London
topic: label: Subject
content: Chemistry
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
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content: Science & Mathematics
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content: Prints from the Physical Sciences Collection
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.329879
label: catalog number
content: 329879
label: accession number
content: 286523
objectType: label: Object Name
content: print
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 16 in x 11 1/2 in; 40.64 cm x 29.21 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: frame: 25 1/4 in x 19 1/4 in x 1 in; 64.135 cm x 48.895 cm x 2.54 cm