Hyman Bloom admired works by artists such as Soutine ("Carcass of Beef", 1924) and Rembrandt ("Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp", 1632; "The Slaughtered Ox", 1655) that explored similar themes. He called the colors of a decaying corpse he had seen in a morgue "harrowing" and yet "beautiful...iridescent and pearly." Many of Bloom's paintings feature rabbis, usually holding the Torah. According to Bloom, his intentions were more artistic than religious. He began questioning his Jewish faith early in life, and painted rabbis, he claimed, because that was what he knew. Over the course of his career he produced dozens of paintings of
Nicolaes Tulp Surgeons. His wife died in the same year, leaving him with five young children. In 1630 he married his second wife, the daughter of the mayor of Outshoorn and she bore him three children. It was Dr Tulp who examined and signed the fitness reports for the first Dutch settlers on the island of Manhattan, and his signature was found on these in the long-lost archives of the Dutch settlement uncovered in the 1980s in the basement of the New York public library. In his job, Tulp was responsible for inspections of apothecary shops. Chemists in Amsterdam had access to