The Doctor by Sir Luke Fildes - London, England - Philatelic Photographs on Waymarking.com

Samuel Luke Fildes, who hailed from Liverpool, was an artist and illustrator who became known for his portraiture. He even executed the State portraits of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. I guess the King was satisfied with his portrait as he Knighted Fildes in 1906. In 1890, sugar merchant and philanthropist, Sir Henry Tate, commissioned Fildes to create a painting with a subject of his own choosing. This was before Tate established the Tate Gallery in London where the painting now hangs.

The subject that Fildes chose was that of a doctor keeping a vigil over a sick child just as dawn is breaking. To create the painting, Fildes constructed the interior of a cottage in his London studio and used his son and daughter as models for the child. Some have suggested that the painting was inspired by Fildes’ own loss of his first-born son to typhoid fever on Christmas day in 1877. The painting was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1891.

This painting became quite popular: According to one source, over a million prints have been sold in the United States. In 1947, the U.S. Post Office Dept. chose to use the painting on a postage stamp commemorating the 100th anniversary of the American Medical Association. It was issued in conjunction with the AMA’s annual meeting held in Atlantic City that year. The painting is quite large - over five feet high. Reducing a painting this large to the size of a postage stamp creates a rather cluttered image in which the details are hard to make out. A couple of years after the stamp was issued, the AMA itself used the painting’s image in their campaign to thwart a move towards nationalized health care in the U.S.

Stamp Issuing Country: United States Date of Issue: 9-Jun-1947 Denomination: 3c Color: brown violet Stamp Type: Single Stamp Relevant Web Site: Not listed

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