David Teniers the Younger, 'Winter', about 1644

This series of four small paintings is an allegory of the seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter have been given human forms that embody the essence of each. Spring is a gardener carrying a tree to plant in a formal garden; Summer is a peasant tying up a sheaf of corn; Autumn is a drinker who raises a glass of wine; and Winter is an old man wearing a fur cap and mantle, warming himself near a brazier.

David Teniers has placed each character, of an appropriate age and dressed accordingly, in the foreground, with a symbolic object also given prominence. In the background, other figures, less posed, appear doing work or other activities associated with the season, depicted in a more realistic way.

The pictures are on a copper base, which allowed the paint to flow more freely than it would on canvas. Teniers could show minute detail: the facial characteristics and expressions, Summer’s hand as he holds the sheaf of corn, Winter’s splendid hat and the objects on his table, and Spring’s smart new jacket. Elsewhere, his brushstrokes are much quicker and less defined, leaving traces in the paint, as in Summer’s coarse textured shirt and in background trees and skies.

Allegorical paintings of the seasons were popular at the time, and Teniers painted several versions of the subject. The four National Gallery pictures are displayed in one frame as a set, but elsewhere they are shown as four separate entities. In some cases, only one or two of the set has survived (one of these, often called ‘The Toper’ but possibly a personification of Autumn, and said to be an imitation, is in the National Gallery’s collection). They are often almost exact copies. The rather idle young man in Summer seems to have been repeated several times, and the hat of the figure in Winter is almost always a copy of the one shown here. It seems that Teniers was cashing in on the popularity of the series and turning them out quickly to fulfil demand.

Strongly influenced early in his career by the Dutch artist Adriaen Brouwer, Teniers became the most famous painter of peasant life of his day, rivalling Brouwer’s rowdy, raunchy tavern scenes full of larger-than-life characters. Teniers enjoyed international popularity in his own lifetime and during the eighteenth century, especially in France. He was so successful that he was able to buy a country house, and was granted a patent of nobility in 1680. His work was imitated by many followers, including his son, David Teniers III.