Sancho Panza

In Cervantes' novel Don Quixote, the adventures of the Don's servant, the lazy, greedy and completely unidealistic Sancho Panza, was the source of many humorous and, to modern tastes, cruel adventures. Here the gourmand Sancho Panza is shown enduring what was to him a torment. A physician is waving an ivory wand and peremptorily ordering his food to be removed as soon as he has only tasted it. The Victorian public found this harsh treatment amusing and the effect is increased because Sancho and his surroundings are not caricatured, but could be a recognisable portrait. One reviewer for The Examiner wrote: 'The eyes of Sancho are despairingly fixed on this grim emblem of perpetual disappointment; and the heartsick discontent which his countenance exhibits is infinitely humorous.'

People

Although Charles Robert Leslie (1794-1859) had begun as a history and portrait painter, he soon turned to literary themes. The collector John Sheepshanks (1787-1863) owned 17 paintings by Leslie with subjects taken from well-known authors, such as Shakespeare, Chaucer and Molière.