Lazar House in the Tropics

Little is known for certain about the early career of Irish immigrant Peter Paul Duggan, except that he was a student in the National Academy's Antique and Life Schools throughout the mid-1840s, including in 1848-49 when he painted his mysterious "Lazar House in the Tropics." The work depicts a plague ward (or lazar house) in the West Indies, which Duggan visited, and the presence of chains conveys the involuntary nature of the subjects' isolation. For much of his adult life, Duggan himself struggled with tuberculosis, adding an autobiographical aspect to his composition. The inscription at the lower edge, "Take physic, pomp," is a passage from Shakespeare's King Lear, in which Lear exhorts himself to experience the hardship suffered by the less fortunate and learn from it.