Allegory of Winter (and of Love)

An old man in a fur hat bends over a pan of glowing coals, picks one up with a pair of tongs and holds it to the bowl of his pipe. Tobacco had spread fast through the Dutch Republic in the early 17th century, and in Utrecht in the 1620s painters liked to show a single smoker or drinker close up, in half-length, filling the canvas. On the face of it this is Winter, one of the four seasons, an old man warming himself by the fire. The Louvre reads a second meaning into the coals, the fire of love, fanned by passion and pleasure, and what becomes of a suitor who courts with too little caution. That is why the title carries love in brackets.

Bloemaert painted it around 1625 to 1630, and in the 17th century it was engraved in Holland by Hendrick Bary. At two sales in Ghent, in 1803 and 1804, it was offered as the pair to a picture by Gerrit van Honthorst, probably his Avarice. The Louvre bought it from a Paris dealer in 1843.