Lot 292: PROPERTY OF A DANISH PRIVATE COLLECTOR PIETRO SALTINI ITALIAN, 1839-1908 THE WAITING ROOM

signed and inscribed PSaltini / Firenze l.l.

oil on canvas

CATALOGUE NOTE

A dentist's waiting room is an unusual subject to find described in such detail in the nineteenth century. However, it provided Saltini with the opportunity to show off his great technical and compositional abilities as a painter while at the same time allowing him to indulge in some humorous social commentary.

The ornate setting clearly implies the material wealth and elevated social position that a succesful professional of the time was able to command. The dentist's well-heeled clientele are complemented by the richly furnished interior decorated with fine draperies, gilded furniture, and objets d'arts.

But as well as taking delight in painting the fine textures and trappings of the setting and its patient occupants, Saltini clearly enjoyed lampooning the traditional gravity attached to the waiting room experience. Wrapped in bandages or holding their jaws, the line of patients is reminiscent of a queue before a confessional box, as suggested by the highly decorated almost ecclesiastical appearance of the pelmet above the entrance to the consulting room. As if the terrible day of Judgement is upon them, all will be treated equally when their turn comes to be examined, regardless of age or position in society.

Ironically, most of the adults seem oblivious to their fate, as they sit around the room reading, making small talk or obsessed by their own ills. But the seriousness of the moment is not lost on the little boy, whose turn it is next. Cowering back from the crone-like face of the dentist, he is instinctively distrustful of this real life child-catcher who pokes his head gleefully out from behind his door. Small in stature, shrivelled in mien and seemingly relishing the power that he wields over his patients' discomfort, the dentist is the physical manifestation of every child's dental nightmare.

The specific time this all takes place Saltini does not divulge: there is no clock on the wall to impart this information. It is of course - as every Chinaman knows - tempting to think that it really might be two-thirty. But whatever the actual time, keeping his eye on his fob watch stands the urbane bearded gentleman by the table: Saltini's nonchalent version of the Grim-Reaper. The real puppet-master, however, is Saltini himself. His palette hangs on the wall to the right of the surgery door. Tucked behind it are portrait photogravures. Like so many playing cards fanned out in the palm of the artist's hand, it is Saltini who determines the lot of these particular characters.

Although far removed in place from Saltini's customary depictions of idealised scenes of peasant life (see lot 277), it is invariably his consumate ability to capture the feelings of the children in his compositions, as in the present work, that give his works such vitality and expression. A Florentine from cradle to grave, he shared this interest with many other leading Italian genre painters of his generation, among them Gaetano Chierici (see lots 274 & 278).

70 by 117cm., 27 1/2 by 46in.