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| Nicolas Poussin Spring, or, The Earthly Paradise 1660-64 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
"In Spring . . . there are no flat planes, no rectangles, and yet every form is only a variant on these forms. The group of Adam and Eve could be derived from an ancient gem; the shrubs in the foreground compose themselves into masses which have an underlying clarity unthinkable without the patiner's earlier experiments with geometrical forms. The Tree of Knowledge over the two figures adds a vertical emphasis which holds together the varied masses around it; and the two sources of light, the direct rays of the sun on the left and the indirect glow on the right [seemingly emanating from the figure of God the Father in the sky] form a perfect but not obvious balance."
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| Nicolas Poussin Summer, or, Ruth and Boaz 1660-64 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
"Summer is built up . . . in a series of regular blocks. Two walls of cut corn run parallel to the front of the picture, and are decorated, as if with a palmette motive, by the actual stems themselves. The main part of the field forms a calm center for the whole composition, like the lakes and rivers in the earlier landscapes, and its broken edge on the right leads the eye through to the farther distance, composed of rocks, sea, and mountains. The three figures in the foreground are placed in profile view, and their gestures form an almost rectangular pattern. The reapers behind them stand out in a frieze, as if cut from the solid block of the corn. On the right we see five horses trampling the corn, a detail that shows Poussin's knowledge of ancient practice and allows him to introduce a magnificent classical group, as noble as the horses on the Arch of Titus [below]."
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| Jean-Guillaume Moitte Scene from the Arch of Titus, Rome ca. 1791 terracotta relief Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
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| Nicolas Poussin Autumn, or, The Spies return with the Grapes from the Promised Land 1660-64 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
"Autumn is freer in its construction, but even here the group in the foreground follows the scheme of the bas-relief, and every step into the space of the picture can be followed without ambiguity."
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| Nicolas Poussin Winter, or, The Flood 1660-64 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
"Winter is composed on equally clear principals. The waterfall performs the function of the wall of corn, and its line is repeated by the rocks, the boat, and the swimming figure in the foreground [copied below by Géricault]. Even the Ark floating on the smoother water in the distance keeps to the strict system of parallel lines."
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| Théodore Géricault after Nicolas Poussin Man clutching Horse in Water (detail from Poussin's Winter, or, The Flood) before 1824 drawing Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
HISTORY: The Four Seasons were painted, according to [André] Félibien, for the Duc de Richelieu between 1660 and 1664. Bought with the whole of the duke's collection by Louis XIV in 1665. [These were] the last works to be completed by Poussin. . . . They show signs of the shakiness of his hand in old age, but in spite of this they are among the noblest examples of his late landscape style. Winter in particular has always aroused the interest of artists and critics, and was enthusiastically praised by men of such different tastes as Diderot, Delacroix, and Turner.
"The Seasons are Poussin's most splendid renderings of the grandeur and the power of nature in her different aspects, benign in Spring, rich in Summer, somber yet fruitful in Autumn, and cruel in Winter. At the same time they illustrate a subsidiary theme, namely the four times of the day: Spring is morning with the sun just rising; Summer is noon; Autumn, with its cool light and long shadows, is evening, and Winter, with its darkness broken only by a watery moon, is night. The combination of these two themes in a series of paintings is yet another instance of Poussin's desire to illustrate the processes of nature. The regular succession of the days and the seasons of the year had been a common symbol for the harmony of the universe in ancient art and literature, and had also been much used by Christians. . . . In antiquity the seasons had usually been represented by allegorical heads of figures, sometimes accompanied by scenes with human beings or putti performing the actions appropriate to each part of the year, and this tradition was carried on in the catacomb paintings, except that the seasons are grouped round the figure of the Good Shepherd. In the Middle Ages artists represented the seasons by episodes taken from everyday life, usually from country life."
"Poussin has approached the matter in a quite different spirit. . . . He has chosen a specific episode to symbolize each season, thereby giving a historical as opposed to a purely allegorical or domestic rendering of the theme. The subjects are drawn from the Old Testament: Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden for spring; Ruth and Boaz for summer; the spies returning with the grapes for autumn; and the Flood for winter. The choice of these subjects is in a sense self-explanatory, since each appositely expresses the character of a particular season. But, as has been shown by W. Sauerländer, there are other and less obvious allusions contained in the choice and treatment of the individual scenes. According to his reading, the first three paintings represent the stages of man's history. Spring, the state ante legem, before the giving of the law to Moses; Autumn, sub lege, under the old dispensation of the Mosaic law; and Summer, sub gratia, under the new dispensation of Christ, since from the marriage of Ruth and Boaz sprang the line of David and thus of Christ, and, according to the common medieval interpretation of the subject, their marriage was also symbolical of Christ's union with the Church. Finally, Winter stands for the Last Judgment. In addition, there may be allusions to the Eucharistic wine in the grapes of Autumn, and to the bread and wine in Summer, where on the left is a woman making bread and another pouring wine out of a skin. A further sacramental reference may be seen in Winter, since the Flood, as the destruction of the evil and the salvation of the good by water, is a symbol of Baptism."
"Finally, there may be a reference to pagan ideas of the seasons. In Spring the sun is shown rising through the gap above Eve, exactly as it is in the Birth of Bacchus, where it symbolizes Apollo; in Summer Ruth, with her ears of corn, could almost be Ceres, and in certain sixteenth-century engravings she is depicted in a form which resembles the pagan goddess even more precisely. The grapes of Autumn could as well be the symbol of Bacchus as of the blood of Christ, and coupled with the oversized apples carried by the right-hand figure they are certainly a symbol of fertility, in this case the fertility of the promised land of Canaan. In Winter the huge snake crawling over the rock appears to have some special importance . . . probably as a symbol of the underworld. The Four Seasons may, therefore, in addition to the Christian symbolism, stand for the four pagan gods: Apollo, Ceres, Bacchus, and Pluto. Such a combination would be in keeping with Poussin's way of thinking at this stage of his career."
– Anthony Blunt, Nicolas Poussin, (Phaidon Press, 1958) and The Paintings of Nicolas Poussin: Critical Catalogue (Phaidon Press, 1966)