William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme a painting by Edmund Leighton. Lever's rival in the soap industry, A & F Pears, had taken the lead in using art for marketing by buying paintings such as "Bubbles" by John Everett Millais to promote its products. Lever's response was to acquire similarly illustrative works, and he later bought 'The New Frock' by William Powell Frith to promote the Sunlight soap brand. In 1922 he founded the Lady Lever Art Gallery at Port Sunlight in Cheshire which he dedicated to his late wife Elizabeth. William Lever was born on 19 September 1851 at 16 Wood Street, Bolton, Lancashire, England.
The Conjurer (painting) seems to exemplify the Flemish proverb: "He who lets himself be fooled by conjuring tricks loses his money and becomes the laughing stock of children." Another Flemish proverb, published and widely distributed ca 1480 in Bosch's hometown of 's-Hertogenbosch about the time of this painting, is: "No one is so much a fool as a willful fool." Bosch had used other proverbs as the basis of his painting, such as "The world is a haystack, and each man plucks from it what he can" for his painting, the Hay Wagon. Elina Gertsman's article about this painting explores this painting from