(Leiden 1656–1738 Warmond)
An Allegory of Love, a couple in a garden near a fountain with an elegant company,
signed lower right: M..R f.,
oil on panel, 70.4 x 52 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Belgium;
sale, Christie’s, Amsterdam, 13 October 2009, lot 49;
with Johnny van Haeften, London;
where acquired by the present owner

Carel de Moor was considered among the foremost of Dutch artists, primarily as a portraitist, at the close of the seventeenth and start of the eighteenth century. Before developing his mature style, he was a reinterpreter of the motifs and compositions of the preceding generation of the Leiden Fijnschilder school. His formation in the workshops of Gerrit Dou and Frans van Mieris may be seen in the details and ambience of the present lot. He founded the ‘Liedsche Tekenakademie’ together with Willem van Mieris and Jacob van Toorenvliet. The present allegory is typical of his courtly manner which found favour with noble circles, leading him to be Knighted by Emperor Charles VI in 1714.

The present canvas is unusual for de Moor as it numbers among one of his few genre-pieces, which are not always as refined as his portraits. The current composition is notable for having the same tenderness and attention to detail that he exercised in depicting his noble sitters or in his history paintings, as may be seen in the facial expressions of the amorous couple and African boy in the foreground. The ‘vrolijk gezelschap’ or Merry Company genre, popular in both the Dutch republic and Flanders, reached its apotheosis in Peter Paul Rubens’s Garden of Love (now conserved in the Prado) with sculptural and architectural detail such as an ornate gateway with herms, redolent of the one in the present picture. De Moor has embellished this archway by adding two river gods on top, which appear to be derived from those then in the Belvedere in the Vatican. Another source of inspiration seems likely to be the engravings of the Farnese Flora from Jan de Bisschop’s Signorum Veterum Icones. On the left of the composition, however, the statue of Eros appears to be the invention of the artist.