Still Life with Game and a Greek Stele: Allegory of Autumn

Painted a year after its spring pendant, this canvas turns to the hunting season. On a marble plinth lies the day's bag, a dead hare and two pheasants, with a hunting horn and a gun of van Os's own time. Around them everything is antique, or made to look it. A stone relief at the left shows a huntress, probably Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt, and a bronze frieze at the bottom has little putti out hunting. The two paintings probably belonged to a series of the four seasons, though only spring and autumn are in the Rijksmuseum, which bought them in 1824. Van Os signed and dated this one on the plinth, G.J.J. van Os. 1818.