JVV 0586
Delft, 1750-1775
The woman is modelled in a relaxed pose leaning back at an angle and resting her right elbow on the raised part of the base. Her right hand rests on a stove containing a brazier that is also on the base. Her left arm rests on her lap. She is dressed in a long white skirt with flowers in brownish red and a brownish red train with a purple bodice above it. She has a pointed hairstyle. The base is marbled. The figurine is painted polychrome in the petit feu technique in black, purple, brown, brown-red, green, yellow and pink.
Dimensions: height 15 cm / 5.90 in., length 11,5 cm / 4.52 in., width 11 cm / 4.33 in.
Similar examples
Three similar figurines of women are in the collection of the Art Museum (Kunstmuseum) in The Hague (inv. no’s 1059364, 1059365, 1059366). Two of them have an attribute in the form of a bird and a fish, the third figurine has no attribute.
Explanatory note
Allegories, symbolic representations of abstract concepts, are common in Dutch art, often in the form of a figure with attributes: a personification. The four seasons are also frequently depicted as personifications, often a female figure with attributes. For spring these are flowers, for summer a bundle of grain, sometimes combined with a scythe or sickle. Autumn is depicted with grapes or by drinking wine, winter by warming over a fire, or - as in this case - with a stove containing a brazier. This figurine of winter is based on a graphic example from the early eighteenth century. The pointed hairstyle, known as a frottage, was fashionable at the time.
Presumably, the figurine was made after a print by Petrus Schenk (1660-1713), who published no fewer than six series of the Four Seasons in his lifetime, all building on the same formula: richly dressed full-length figures, mostly women, with seasonal attributes (Bruijnen & Janssen, p. 202).
The oblique, half-reclining, pose of the figurine is very similar to that in Schenk's prints. On another personification of Winter, the artist also used a stove with brazier (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, inv.no. RP-P-1927-154). However, the woman does not hold the stove in her hand but has placed her right foot on it, as a stove with brazier was used in the usual way.
Literature
Y. Bruijnen, P.H. Janssen, De Vier Jaargetijden in de kunst van de Nederlanden 1500-1750, Zwolle, ’s-Hertogenbosch, Louvain 2002
