Spring, Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne, 1625 – (Adriaen Pietersz Van De Venne) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Adriaen Pietersz Van De Venne

Date: 1625

Size: 15 x 37 cm

Technique: Oil On Panel

These four small paintings form the only painted series of the Four Seasons by Adriaen van de Venne that is still intact: Spring (shown here), Summer (SK-A-1771), Autumn (SK-A-1773) and Winter (SK-A-1774). All of them are in a good and original condition. Van de Venne often incorporated the subject of the seasons in his early landscapes.4 Compared with these early works, this last known series of 1625 has drastically lowered vantage points, the figures have been enlarged relative to the picture surface, and their numbers reduced. The execution is freer and more draughtsman-like as a result of the use of dark painted contours to define the figures and other elements in the composition. Formal similarities link this series with the Skaters (SK-A-1768) and Shrove Tuesday in a Country Village (SK-A-1931) of the same year as well as with the gouaches in Van de Venne’s album, ’tLants Sterckte (The land’s fortress and strength) of 1626.5 For example, the skater with a pole over his shoulder in Winter reappears in mirror image on folio 99 in the album.6 The red cape of the man in Spring is repeated literally on folio 10,7 while the horseman in Summer is found on folio 4.8 That the horseman was used as a model for the album is clear not only from the later date of the album but also from the fact that his trailing right sleeve was originally repeated in the album but was then expunged.9 A variation on the running page in Summer is found on folio 15.10 Moreover, there is a carriage drawn by four white horses very like the one in Summer on folio 13, although there it is open.11 Since the figure in the carriage is identified in the album as Frederik Hendrik,12 the very similar figure in the coach in Summer, towards whom the horseman is making a levade, may also be the stadholder. The possible presence of Frederik Hendrik in Summer would be a reference to life at court, while the series is situated in The Hague by the recognizable tower of the St Jacobskerk in Summer and by the free rendering of the Stadholders’ Quarter with its Maurits tower in Winter.13 The costumes of the protagonists also appear to allude to court circles, especially the white gown of the lady in Spring, with her gold chain and belt, and costly fan of ostrich feathers with a handle of precious metal.14 Van Suchtelen rightly observed that the rather unusual horizontal format of the panels indicates that they were made for a specific interior, so the series was probably commissioned.15 At the same time, the way in which Van de Venne depicted the subject of the Four Seasons also appealed to a wider public, for the series was almost simultaneously reproduced in print by Herman Breckerveld and published in The Hague by Broer Jans.16 The prints reproduce the paintings in full size and in the same direction, and may have been a cheap alternative for hanging on the wall. Spring and Autumn are dated 1625, like the paintings, while Summer and Winter are dated a year later. Herman Breckerveld, who moved from The Hague to Arnhem in 1625, probably made his drawings directly after the paintings in 1625, and then worked the engravings up in Arnhem, which might explain the later dates on Summer and Winter.17 Iconographically, Summer is something of an exception within the series. Couples play a prominent part in Spring, Autumn and Winter, and the coarseness of poor people and peasants is stressed with details like the beggar dressed in rags in Spring, the urinating boy in Autumn, and the figures urinating, defecating and picking their noses in Winter, together with the man staring at the bare buttocks of a woman who has fallen on the ice. These anecdotal elements are supplemented with macabre details characteristic of Van de Venne, like the drowned lamb in the water on the right in Autumn.18 Summer lacks the couples, as well as the indecorous details. A second inconsistency concerns the seasonal still lifes, which in Spring and Autumn take the form of flowers and autumn fruits, but which are missing altogether in Summer and Winter. Yvette Bruijnen, 2007 See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 296.