31/10/2025
We are fortunate to have a large, illuminated shopfront on Jermyn Street, which allows passersby to enjoy a sneak peak of the gallery, whatever the time.
We realise that most of our audience are not London-based and, thus, do not have the chance to see what we have on display in our window.
So we would like to share with you the first instalment of a regular series of posts that will show what we currently have on display in our window.
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Once described as ‘among the artist’s most delicate and charming works’, this painting by Thomas de Keyser is a refined example of Dutch seventeenth-century portraiture infused with allegorical meaning.
Depicting a richly dressed woman personifying Flora, the Roman goddess of spring and renewal, the painting merges the traditions of mythological allegory and a portrait likeness.
Dutch artists influenced by Italian humanism and classical learning began to depict Flora as part of mythological cycles, referencing both classical humanism and the contemporary fascination with the natural world. Symbolically the character of Flora, who was inevitably modelled from a beautiful young woman, referenced the transient nature of beauty and life.
Here De Keyser reimagines his subject as the elegant goddess who, with her rich white satin dress and freshly cut flowers, brings colour and life to the otherwise earthy composition; one even wonders whether the artist also deliberately placed blossoming flowers around his monogram to reference that it is both he and Flora who have brought life to the painting.
In our painting Thomas de Keyser achieves a delicate synthesis of realism, allegory, and social portraiture. The painting embodies the seventeenth-century Dutch ideal of measured grace—neither the mythic sensuality of Botticelli nor the emotional immediacy of Rembrandt, but something quietly human and urbane. This Flora is not an otherworldly goddess, but a reflection of contemporary womanhood: refined, virtuous, and in harmony with the moral and natural order of her world.
This painting is now available for purchase. If you would like a high-resolution image and our cataloguing, please do get in touch.
