Antwerp School, Follower of Bassano

The Four Seasons: A Set of Four—Winter
inscribed with the panel maker Guilliam Gabron—mark on the reverse

oil on panel

29×20 1/6" (73.7 cm×51 cm)

PROVENANCE:

This set of The Four Seasons derive from a series first painted by Jacopo Bassano (circa 1510–1592) around 1574. The series proved extremely popular and quite a number of repetitions were created within the artist’s workshop. Experts are in disagreement as to whether four autograph versions of the originals survive.(1) There is a complete set of the series in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna that are given to his son Francesco Bassano (1549–1592). Between 1598–1601, Jan Sadeler I (1550-1600) and his brother Raphael Sadeler I (1560/61–1628 or 1632) made engravings of The Four Seasons while in Venice. Disseminated throughout Europe, these prints proved inspirational for numerous artists in Italy, Flanders, The Netherlands and France including: Luca Giordano (1632–1705), Giambattista Volpato (1633–1706), Francesco Maffei (c. 1600/1620–1660), Giambattista Zampezzi (1620–1700), Giovanni Antonio Guardi (1698–1760) and Giambattista Piazzetta (1682–1754).(2) Repetitions of Spring and Winter are known by David Teniers the Younger (1610–1690), whose technique and rendering of landscapes from the middle of the 1650s are most notably influenced by the works of Bassano.(3)

Distinct in their coloration, our panels are characteristic of the Antwerp School, confirmed by the marks of Guilliam Gabron on the reverse. Guilliam Gabron was one of the most productive panel makers during the first half of the seventeenth century in Antwerp. Dr. Jorgen Wadum, technical curator of the Mauritshuis in The Hague and an acknowledged expert on panel as support, identified the panel maker as Guilliam Gabron and dated the panels according to their marks as after 1630. Our cycle, commences with Spring the time for the regeneration of life. The panel sprouts and blooms with vegetation, populated with a peasantry hard at work, planting, milking and hunting. The seated young girl in the center foreground has been picking flowers. A rooster and hen proudly gaze at their chicks in the lower right foreground. Summer reveals sheep shearing, grain harvesting and threshing, with meal preparations for the laborers taking place on a spread cloth on the ground. Autumn depicts grape harvesting and wine pressing. Cold weather defines the panel of Winter with the gathering and chopping of wood, the curled up dog of the center foreground, the cat huddled under the table of the lean-to with its blazing fire where meat is being readied for storage, while swirls of smoke mark a leaden sky.(4) This series realistic depiction of the everyday scenes the artist would have encountered in his native town of Bassano del Grappa, are further unified by the inclusion of the distinctive shape of Monte Grappa in the distance and the seasonal effects on the hillside that reflect the climatic changes.(5)

Responsive to the needs and desires of a rapidly expanding mass market in Antwerp during this period, series such as these nicely suited the decorative schemes of the well-appointed houses of the recently wealthy. Their size and subjects were deemed appropriate for display in the public rooms of these homes, intended as testimony to their owner’s status and refinement.(6)

(1) Bernard Aikema, Jacopo Bassano and his Public, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1996, p. 133.

(2) Paola Marini, âÄúJacopo Bassano Seen AnewâÄù, exhibition catalogue Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, Jacopo Bassano, January 23–April 25, 1993, pp. 36–37, 43.

(3) Adriaen Brouwer, David Teniers the Younger, catalogue Noortman & Brod, New York, October 7–October 30, 1982, p. 110.

(4) W.R. Rearick, âÄúThe Life and Works of Jacopo dal Ponte, called Bassano c. 1510–1592,âÄù in Jacapo Bassano, op. cit. p. 146.

(5) Ibid, p. 146.

(6) Ibid, p. 138.

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