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Lot Essay
This picture originally formed a pendant to the painting A Loving Couple (sold Sotheby's, London, 10 July 2003, lot 25), with which it was still united at the time of its sale from the collection of Herman Ten Kate in 1801. A third picture on this theme was in the same sale (lot 146; now Leiden, Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal) and Braun has suggested that, along with a Marriage Contract (St. Petersburg, The Hermitage), Steen conceived the four pictures as a cohesive series, datable around 1664-68 (op. cit.).
Steen's amorous couple are here shown reclining joyously in their pastoral setting. The mood is in contrast to the grappling couple that feature in the Leiden picture and offers something of a conclusion to the overt and rather tense courting going on in the Sotheby's work. The trepidation elicited by the couple in the pendant is here answered by a pervading sense of joyous intimacy. The couple gaze lovingly at each other and their legs entwine, while the man holds his flute suggestively over the woman's midrift. The symbolism of this gesture (the flute being a well known symbol of manhood), would not have been lost on Steen's audience. Similarly, the woman's abandonment of chastity is made clear by her release of the bird from her cage as she throws her left arm back. In this way Steen makes clear that the burgeoning yet unconsumated affair at the centre of this picture's pendant here reaches its happy conclusion.
Steen's amorous couple are here shown reclining joyously in their pastoral setting. The mood is in contrast to the grappling couple that feature in the Leiden picture and offers something of a conclusion to the overt and rather tense courting going on in the Sotheby's work. The trepidation elicited by the couple in the pendant is here answered by a pervading sense of joyous intimacy. The couple gaze lovingly at each other and their legs entwine, while the man holds his flute suggestively over the woman's midrift. The symbolism of this gesture (the flute being a well known symbol of manhood), would not have been lost on Steen's audience. Similarly, the woman's abandonment of chastity is made clear by her release of the bird from her cage as she throws her left arm back. In this way Steen makes clear that the burgeoning yet unconsumated affair at the centre of this picture's pendant here reaches its happy conclusion.