The Four Seasons: Spring

1625

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 14.7 cm × width 37.3 cm
outer size: height 22.7 cm × width 45.3 cm × depth 3.5 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature and date, bottom left (A and D ligated): 1625 / AD: v: Venne

Technical notes

The support consists of a single oak plank with a horizontal grain bevelled on all sides. There is an indentation at the bottom, left of centre, probably for a framing construction. Similar indentations appear in the other three panels of the same series. The wood of all four panels is from the same tree. Dendrochronology of the series has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1601. The panel could have been ready for use by 1610, but a date in or after 1616 is more likely. The ground layer is probably thin and whitish. Infrared reflectography reveals the underdrawing in black for most of the figures and the horse, which was followed in the paint layers. The long tail of the horse, covering the left hind leg, was possibly shorter in the underdrawing, where the leg is visible. The red coat of the man is the only element prepared in one secure line, with parallel hatchings defining the shadows. Moreover, Melany Gifford established in 2004 during examination with the stereomicroscope that there seems to be a reddish-brown underdrawing in oil paint on top of the painted sky and landscape, fragments of which are visible to the naked eye in the tree on the left and the horse. The painting is meticulously executed.

Scientific examination and reports

infrared reflectography: E. Buijsen, RKD, 28 May 2001
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 15 February 2002
technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 5 August 2002

Condition

Good. The painting is slightly abraded, while the varnish is matte at the retouched areas.

Conservation

M. Zeldenrust, 1978: complete restoration
M. Bijl, 1978: complete restoration

Provenance

...; sale, George Tierney (†) et al., London (Christie’s), 19 May 1883, no. 143, £ 83, to Rutley;¹...; bequeathed to the museum by Daniel Franken Dzn (1838-98), Amsterdam and Le Vésinet, 1898

Object number: SK-A-1772

Credit line: D. Franken Bequest, Le Vésinet

The artist

Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne (Delft c. 1589 - The Hague 1662)

According to Cornelis de Bie, Adriaen van de Venne was born into a southern Netherlandish immigrant family in Delft in 1589. De Bie also states that he was taught drawing and illumination by the Leiden goldsmith and painter Simon de Valck, and was then apprenticed to the grisaille painter Jeronymus van Diest, both of whom are now otherwise unknown.

Van de Venne is first documented in 1614 in Middelburg, where he remained until around 1625. It was in 1614 that he married the daughter of a Zeeland sea captain, Elisabeth de Pours. Dating from that same year are his earliest known paintings, Fishing for Souls (SK-A-447) and two summer and winter pendants.² On the evidence of an affinity with the work of Jan Brueghel the Elder, it has been assumed that he spent some time in Antwerp before 1614. However, the local Middelburg painters were already working in Brueghel’s style at that time. The fact that he married a woman of Zeeland, and that his father and his brother Jan had settled in the town in 1605 and 1608 respectively, make it likely that he was in Middelburg before 1614. In 1618, his brother Jan opened a shop selling paintings and set up a publishing business, in which Adriaen played an important role as a print designer, poet, and illustrator of books by Jacob Cats, among other authors. Starting in 1618 he also designed several propaganda prints supporting the House of Orange and Frederick V, the Elector Palatine. Van de Venne is last documented in Middelburg on 30 June 1624. He then moved to The Hague, where he is recorded as a resident on 22 March 1625. His departure from Middelburg roughly coincided with the death of his brother Jan, and his decision to settle in The Hague probably had something to do with the presence of the court there, which played an important part in the subjects he chose. Among his earliest works in The Hague were the prints and paintings of Prince Maurits Lying in State (SK-A-446), several impressions of which were ordered by the States-General on 21 July 1625.³ He enrolled in the Guild of St Luke in 1625, and a year later acquired his Hague citizenship. He retained his house in Middelburg, and in 1630 bought another one in The Hague, from which he sold his prints and books. He was warden of the guild from 1631 to 1633 and from 1637 to 1639, and filled the post of dean from 1639 to 1641. He was also a member of the Ionghe Batavieren (Young Batavians) chamber of rhetoric. His fame was such that he was included in Johannes Meyssens’s book, Image de divers hommes desprit sublime, where it is stated that the Prince of Orange owned several works by him. In 1656, Van de Venne was also involved in setting up a new confraternity, the Confrerie Pictura, which broke away from the Guild of St Luke. At the end of his life he ran into financial difficulties. He made his will in 1660 after falling ill, and died on 12 November 1662. Two of his sons, Pieter (c. 1615-57) and Huijbregt (1634/35-after 1682), were also painters.

Van de Venne’s painted oeuvre can be divided into his Middelburg and Hague periods. In Middelburg he produced some of his most ambitious, meticulously painted works with politico-allegorical subjects, as well as many landscape scenes in the manner of Jan Brueghel the Elder. In The Hague he concentrated almost exclusively on grisailles for the open market, most of them genre pieces with a comical, moralistic slant with inscribed banderoles, but he also made religious, allegorical works and a few large-scale equestrian portraits of rulers. He abandoned the meticulous style of his Middelburg period for a freer, sometimes even sketchy technique, which enabled him to boost his output to ‘hundreds of monochrome pieces, both known and desired by devotees of art’, as J. Campo Weyerman put it.

Yvette Bruijnen, 2007

References
Meyssens 1649; De Bie 1661, pp. 234-46; Van Bleyswijck 1667, II, pp. 857-58; Houbraken I, 1718, pp. 136-37; Campo Weyerman I, 1729, pp. 340-41; Franken 1878, pp. 7-30; Obreen II, 1879-80, pp. 108-09, III, 1880-81, pp. 258, 272, 275, IV, 1881-82, pp. 59, 128, 148, V, 1882-83, pp, 68-69, 71-74, 96, 102, 133, 153, VI, 1884-87, pp. 52, 226; Bredius II, 1916, pp. 374-93, VII, 1921, pp. 240-45; Bol 1958; Royalton-Kisch 1988, pp. 37-74; Bol 1989; Van Suchtelen in Amsterdam 1993, p. 321; Briels 1997, pp. 394-95; Buijsen in The Hague 1998, pp. 255-62, 354

Entry

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.

Literature

Knuttel 1917, p. 71, nos. 25-28; Royalton-Kisch 1988, pp. 47, 86, 150; Bol 1989, pp. 31-32; Van Suchtelen in The Hague 2001, no. 35, pp. 165-66, with earlier literature; Buijsen 2005, pp. 145, 194, note 54

Collection catalogues

1903, p. 278, nos. 2492-2095; 1934, p. 295, nos. 2492-2495; 1960, pp. 322-23, nos. 2492-2495; 1976, p. 566, nos. A 1771 - A 1774; 2007, no. 296

Citation

Y. Bruijnen, 2007, 'Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne, The Four Seasons: Spring, 1625', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6394

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