3-061-606 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

A toothdrawer concealing the key from the patient. The painting shows a surgical operator approaching a young woman in order to extract a tooth. One of the themes of the painting is the contrast between the two figures: he is old, she is young; his clothes are drab and scruffy, hers are colourful and neat; he is dirty and unshaven, she is well-scrubbed. At the centre of the composition, her clean pink hand is juxtaposed to his mottled grey hand, his grimy fingernails to her clear-skinned neck. She is trustingly exposing her person, he is deceptively hiding behind his back the instrument of his imminent assault.