Allegory of Winter

Of the four seasons, Winter is the odd one out. Spring, Summer and Autumn each put a classical deity on the chariot, Flora, Ceres and Bacchus. Winter has an old man instead, and its element is water. When the series was broken up in London in 1886, this canvas and Autumn carried on as a pair. They were sold together at Christie's in 1945, passed through several dealers, and in 1990 the Dutch collector Eric Albada Jelgersma bought both. In 2013 Spring joined them in his collection. Summer had been in the Mauritshuis since 1992, so in 2018 the museum bought the other three, with support from the VriendenLoterij, a Dutch charity lottery, and the Rembrandt Association, a society that helps museums acquire art. Since 2019 the four have hung together again, for the first time since they were split up in 1886.