Allegory of Autumn

Five small boys play among grapes, wine, apples and pears, the harvest goods that stand for autumn. Everything is painted in greys on flat canvas, made to hang above a door and pass for a marble relief. The Antwerp painter Martinus Josephus Geeraerts dated it 1750.

It first belonged to Gerret Braamcamp, a wealthy Amsterdam collector. After his death his pictures were sold in 1771, and this one went to Prince William V of Orange in The Hague. In 1795 the French confiscated the prince's collection and took it to Paris, where it stayed until 1815. The grey over-door has been in the Mauritshuis since 1822.