Winter, from a Series of the Four Seasons

Sculpted in the round. The figure and plinth are carved from a single block of marble.

The thumb of the left hand, the tip of the second toe on the left foot, and a corner of the plinth are missing. The thumb and middle, ring and little finger on the right hand have been reattached with glue. The thumb and little finger on the same hand are possibly replacements. The statue displays various minor points of damage in places, most notably on the abdomen, the right thigh, the left hip, the owl’s wing and the garlands on the pedestal. The marble’s surface is chipped, abraded and stained in areas.

…; from the dealer Webb of Bond Street, London, £ 250, to Richard Grenville, 1st or 2nd Duke of Buckingham, Stowe House, date unknown;¹¹H.R. Forster, The Stowe Catalogue: Priced and Annotated, London 1848, p. 269, no. 86. Probably the dealer John Webb (1799-1880), who ran his business from no. 8 Old Bond Street from before 1837 until c. 1857. Because the date of the purchase is unknown, it is uncertain which duke acquired the piece: either the 1st (1776-1839) or the 2nd (1797-1861) Duke of Buckingham. sale collection Richard Grenville, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (1797-1861), Stowe House (Christie and Manson), 3  October 1848, no. 86 (1st suppl. cat., p. 8), £ 89 s. 5, for all four sculptures, to Mark Philips, Esq.;²²H.R. Forster, The Stowe Catalogue: Priced and Annotated, London 1848, p. 269, no. 86. unknown private collection, England; from Heim Gallery, London, with BK-1970-29-A and -B, fl. 35,000 for all three, to the museum, with support from the Commissie voor Fotoverkoop, 1970

ObjectNumber: BK-1970-29-C

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Stichting tot Bevordering van de Belangen van het Rijksmuseum

Winter is personified by a young boy who warms himself standing next to a small fire burning atop a four-sided pedestal adorned with hanging garlands. A hooded mantle falls from his head down along his back, with the lower folds draped across the hips. It is held in place by a buckled strap that diagonally traverses his upper torso. Perched at the pedestal’s base is an owl, an animal that may symbolize various concepts. In what manner the owl is to be interpreted is unclear, given the sculpture’s specific context. It may possibly refer to Night, associated with the owl’s ability to see in the dark and the long duration of winter nights.

The statue belongs to a group of the Four Seasons, with Summer (BK-1970-29-A) and Autumn (BK-1970-29-B) 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’.³³H.R. Forster, The Stowe Catalogue: Priced and Annotated, London 1848, p. 269, no. 86. At this time, the group was therefore still complete and situated in the garden of the orangery. The figure representing Spring is presumably no longer extant, as it has not been seen again since the sale. A terracotta Spring attributed to Artus II Quellinus (1625-1700) that surfaced on the art market in 2015, provides an impression of what the missing statue might have looked like.⁴⁴Antwerp, Galerie Lowet de Wotrenge (2015). In style and pose, the terracotta approximates the other three sculptures. While the standing figures of the latter works are accompanied by a classical pedestal as a support, however, this Spring leans against a tree stump. Accordingly, it is unlikely that the terracotta served as a design for the missing Amsterdam statue.

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.⁵⁵For a tentative inventory of the kinderken statues still today preserved in the Netherlands, see the appendices in E.V. Buitenhuis, De tuinsieraadkunst in de Hollandse tuin, 1983 (unpublished thesis, Leiden University).

When acquired by the museum in 1970, the three Seasons were attributed to Artus I Quellinus (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 II Quellinus. From 1652 to 1654, the younger Quellinus belonged to the team of sculptors working on the sculptural decoration of the Amsterdam city 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 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,⁶⁶See S. Landuyt, De funeraire monumenten van Artus Quellinus de Jonge (1625-1700): Een kritische analyse van hun geschiedenis, iconografie en stijl, 1998 (unpublished thesis, KU Leuven), vol. 4, for instance plates 166, 272-75. For Artus II Quellinus’s various putto types, see ibid., vol. 1, pp. 96-98 and plates 158-90. The three Seasons in the Rijksmuseum fall under Landuyt’s ‘type 1d’. the main altar (1685) of the Sint-Jacobskerk in Antwerp,⁷⁷S. Landuyt, De funeraire monumenten van Artus Quellinus de Jonge (1625-1700): Een kritische analyse van hun geschiedenis, iconografie en stijl, 1998 (unpublished thesis, KU Leuven), vol. 4, figs. 177-79, 188. and the former Kuipersaltaar (1678-1679) in the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal, also in Antwerp.⁸⁸S. Landuyt, De funeraire monumenten van Artus Quellinus de Jonge (1625-1700): Een kritische analyse van hun geschiedenis, iconografie en stijl, 1998 (unpublished thesis, KU Leuven), vol. 4, esp. figs. 180-84. 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.⁹⁹See KIK-IRPA, object no. 31595.

Autumn (BK-1970-29-B) has been linked to a drawing and several sculptures made by (or attributed to the circle of) François Duquensnoy, Peter Paul Rubens, Georg Petel and Artus I Quellinus. Even in the absence of known direct precursors, Summer and Winter are firmly rooted in the same tradition.

Titia de Haseth Möller, 2021

H.R. Forster, The Stowe Catalogue: Priced and Annotated, London 1848, p. 269, no. 86; Forty Paintings and Sculptures from the Gallery’s Collection, Autumn Exhibition, exh. cat. (Heim Gallery) London 1966, no. 39; ‘Keuze uit de Aanwinsten’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 19 (1971), pp. 189-94, esp. p. 189; E. Rümmler, C. Theuerkauff et al., Europäische Barockplastik am Niederrhein: Grupello und seine Zeit, exh. cat. Düsseldorf (Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf) 1971, p. 305 (under no. 249-250); C. Theuerkauff, ‘Nederlandse beeldhouwkunst uit de barok op de internationale tentoonstelling ‘Grupello und seine Zeit’ te Dusseldorp’, Antiek 5 (1971), p. 558: J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 338a, with earlier literature; E.V. Buitenhuis, De tuinsieraadkunst in de Hollandse tuin, 1983 (unpublished thesis, Leiden University), App. I A, p. 13; F. Baudouin, ‘Twee Rubensiaanse tekeningen in de Albertina te Wenen en hun samenhang met beeldhouwkunst uit de zeventiende eeuw’, Bulletin van de Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis 57 (1986), pp. 59-79, esp. pp. 68-69; E. de Jong and C. Schellekens, Het beeld buiten: Vier eeuwen tuinsculptuur in Nederland, exh. cat. Heino/Wijhe (Kasteel ’t Nijenhuis) 1994, pp. 56-57 (ill.); S. Landuyt, De funeraire monumenten van Artus Quellinus de Jonge (1625-1700): Een kritische analyse van hun geschiedenis, iconografie en stijl, 1998 (unpublished thesis, KU Leuven), vol. 1, p. 96, 116, vol. 4, fig. 183; F. Scholten, Artus Quellinus: Sculptor of Amsterdam, Amsterdam 2010, p. 36, fig. 44; S. Haag et al., Wintermärchen: Winter-Darstellungen in der euopäischen Kunst von Bruegel bis Beuys, exh. cat. Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum)/Zürich (Kunsthaus Zürich) 2011-12, pp. 252-53, no. 92

T. de Haseth Möller, 2025, 'Artus (II) Quellinus, Winter, from a Series of the Four Seasons, Antwerp, c. 1680 - c. 1690', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.24834