Recovery from Sickness, an Allegory

A mother nurses her sick child while Death is driven off by an angel. The composition appears an adaptation of Salvator Rosa's L'umana fragilit… (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, PD. 53 -1958), using the same allegory of death and sickness, while the mother and child group recall Reynold's Mrs Angerstein and her Daughter of 1773 (private collection). Dated 1768-9 by Waterhouse. DPG102 was acquired by Bourgeois at the Reynolds studio sale of 1796.