Autumn, from a Series of the Four Seasons

Entry

Autumn is personified by a young boy who leans against a hexagonal pedestal holding leafy bunches of grapes. A wreath of grapevines drapes around his head, which he tilts back with open mouth, poised to devour grapes from a bunch held in his upraised right hand. The boy’s billowing mantle is held in place by a ringed strap that wraps around his body above the waist. A flask-like wine jug stands immediately behind his left leg.

The statue belongs to a group of the Four Seasons, with Summer (BK-1970-29-A) and Winter (BK-1970-29-C) also held in the museum collection. In the catalogue accompanying the Stowe House sale of 1848 (see Provenance), the series is described as ‘A set of four exquisite small marble figures of the Seasons, by A. Quelinus’.³ At this time, the group was therefore still complete and situated in the garden of the orangery. The Spring figure is presumably no longer extant, as it has not been seen again since the sale. A terracotta Spring attributed to Artus Quellinus II (1625-1700) that surfaced on the art market in 2015, provides an impression of what the missing statue might have looked like.⁴

The natural abrasion of the marble indicates that in the past the sculpture stood outdoors for an extended period of time. Garden statues in the form of life-size, allegorical children’s figures were a common feature in baroque gardens in the Northern Netherlands. With the rise of the English landscape style garden at the end of the eighteenth century, however, these so-called kinderkens (little children) fell out of favour, with most eventually lost. The three statues of Summer, Autumn, and Winter in the Rijksmuseum are among the few surviving examples of this once highly popular genre.⁵

When acquired by the museum in 1970, the three Seasons were attributed to Artus Quellinus I (1609-1668). Stylistically, however, they display a greater affinity with the somewhat later children’s figures of the master’s younger cousin and apprentice, Artus Quellinus II. From 1652 to 1654, the younger Quellinus belonged to the team of sculptors working on the sculptural decoration of the Amsterdam town hall under the direction of his elder cousin, whose austere, classicist-baroque style he adopted. Upon returning to Antwerp, however, this sculptural style gradually gave way to a more theatrical, late-baroque idiom of form likewise evident in the three surviving garden statues in the Rijksmuseum. Characteristic are the elegant poses, sumptuous locks of hair and lavish draperies. Stylistically, numerous sculptures of children by Artus Quellinus II display marked similarities to the three statues in the Rijksmuseum, such as those adorning the main altar (c. 1666) and communion bench (c. 1665?) in the Sint-Romboutskerk in Mechelen,⁶ the main altar (1685) of the Sint-Jacobskerk in Antwerp,⁷ and the former Kuipersaltaar (1678-79) in the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal, also in Antwerp.⁸ A striking agreement between Autumn and the infant Christ – with his dancing step and upturned gaze – from the sculptural group St Joseph with Christ as a Child in the Église de Notre-Dame at Saint-Trond can also be observed.⁹

Baudouin pointed out Autumn’s close similarity to the following works: a chalk drawing of Bacchus as a Child formerly attributed to Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640);¹⁰ a small ivory sculpture adorning the lid of an Augsburg Deckelhumpe (lidded tankard) by, or from the circle of, Georg Petel (1601/2-1635) after a design by Rubens;¹¹ and a terracotta statuette featured in paintings by the Antwerp painter Gerard Thomas (1663-1720) – possibly (after) a non-extant sculpture by Artus Quellinus I.¹²

Despite differences, no doubt these works are derived from the same prototype. Baudouin’s research led to the hypothesis that the drawing of Bacchus as a Child was a copy (made by a sculptor?) of a non-extant painted or drawn sketch design by Rubens, on which Petel and Artus Quellinus I subsequently modelled their Bacchus children. Artus Quellinus II, in his turn, was then thought to have based his Autumn on the terracotta modelled by his older cousin.¹³ Not to be overlooked, however, is the influence of François du Quesnoy (1597-1643), the Flemish sculptor active in Rome, whose plump putti greatly contributed to the genre’s popularity. Both Rubens and Artus Quellinus I were admirers of Du Quesnoy’s work and are known to have possessed sculptures of his making. Having served Du Quesnoy as his apprentice for several years in Rome, the elder Quellinus was very familiar with his work, as was undoubtedly his younger cousin. The resemblance between the Amsterdam Autumn and the small Cupid in Du Quesnoy’s bronze Apollo and Cupid (c. 1630-40)¹⁴ is striking; the above-cited Christ Child at Saint-Trond is an even closer imitation thereof. It is above all the suggestion of frozen motion that emerges as a shared characteristic of these three sculptures, thus indicating a direct link to Du Quesnoy’s Cupid. This is less the case with the ivory, while the poses of the terracotta statuette and the Bacchus in the drawing display a far greater stability through their more conventional contrapposto. Accordingly, there are strong grounds for citing Du Quesnoy’s Cupid as Artus Quellinus II’s direct model. This does not exclude the possibility that the younger of the two sculptors may have derived such a noteworthy detail as the flat wine jug – present both in the drawing and on the terracotta – from a variant of Du Quesnoy’s invention, e.g. the terracotta statuette that Baudouin linked to Artus Quellinus I.

Titia de Haseth Möller, 2025