Hendrick Carré

The actual painting is warmer and a lot less red in tone than the catalogue illustration suggests. The canvas has an old effective relining. No damages are apparent. The paint surface is under a thick and glossy layer of varnish. The paint layer is a little abraded in the background figures and in the darker passages, e.g. in the doctor's trousers, but otherwise, in good condition. Minor strengthening can be observed in places, e.g. in the drapery upper left and in the chair lower right. Inspection under Ultra-Violet light remains inconclusive due to the varnish, but there are possibly some older retouchings underneath. Offered in a decorative carved gilt and plaster wood frame, with a few losses. (MW)
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Hendrik Carré was the son and pupil of genre painter and etcher Franciscus Carré. After his father's death in 1669, he moved to Antwerp and became an apprentice of Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), before he returned to the Netherlands, where he worked in Amsterdam and The Hague. Carré's small oeuvre mainly consists of depictions of half-length genre figures, but he also painted several conversation pieces, such as the one sold, London, Christie's, 14 December 2001, lot 38, and interior scenes, such as this painting.

The theme of a doctor inspecting a young woman's urine sample, traditionally indicating the woman's lovesickness or pregnancy, is made explicit in the present work by the inscription on the chair.¹ The burning shoelace in the foreground also traditionally refers to a pregnancy.

We are grateful to Dr. Marieke de Winkel for her help in cataloguing this lot.

1. The English translation of the inscription reads: no compassion needed here, since it is the pain of love