NEW YORK, NY.- To welcome the Spring, Christie’s is hosting a special Private Selling exhibition at Rockefeller Center and online from 17 April until 21 May inspired by the Four Seasons represented in art from the 17th century to now through works by Salomon van Ruysdael, Jules Breton, August Rodin, Claude Monet, Winslow Homer, and Matthew Wong, among others. Entitled Four Centuries | Four Seasons, the exhibition is comprised of 23 works of art.

For millennia, the change of season has dictated the rhythm of humanity’s existence and been represented by artists keen to celebrate the beauty of the environment as it adapts. For 250 years Christie’s has helped steward some of humanity’s greatest artistic treasures across generations and cultures and has committed to building a sustainable business so that great natural beauty can inspire future generations. It is fitting that the exhibition is being held now following Christie’s recently announced pledge to be net zero by 2030, and it is all the more is timely since Earth Day will fall on 22 April.

To mark the exhibition, Christie’s has partnered with and pledged a donation on behalf of its clients to the New York Botanical Garden (NTBG), a world leader in environmental conservation since 1891. Despite almost doubling their building square footage during the past 10 years, NYBG has reduced energy use per square foot by 20% and reduced emissions by 54% per square foot of building.

Joshua Glazer, Specialist and Head of Private Sales for Old Master Paintings, commented, “The four seasons have long offered artists a rich terrain in which to explore quintessential themes from fertility to death as well as a range of aesthetic effects in different genres, such as landscapes, still-lifes and allegories. It is thrilling to see how works of art speak to each other across four hundred years in this exhibition and how this conversation informs us about our relationship to nature in today’s modern world.”

Highlights

SPRING
ROBERT WILLIAM VONNOH (1858-1933)
Jardin en Fleurs
oil on canvas
Painted circa 1890




This work was likely painted in Grèz-sur-Loing, where Robert Vonnoh settled in the late 1880s. The artist is credited as one of the earliest painters to introduce European Impressionism to the United States having travelled back and forth between his hometown of Boston and France, where he studied in Paris at the Academie Julian and, in turn, taught Impressionism at home at the Cowles School, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and later at the Academy of the Fine Arts in Pennsylvania. He was impressed by the work of Claude Monet, whose influence is apparent in works such as Jardin en Fleurs for its high-keyed palette and exceptional use of light.

SUMMER
GABRIELE MÜNTER (1877-1962)
Gartentoerl (Garden Gate)
oil on board
Painted in 1912

This painting portrays the painter Wassily Kandinsky working in the garden of Gabriele Münter's house at Murnau, Bavaria. The two artists met in 1902 when Münter was a student of Kandinsky's at the Phalanx School in Munich, and they soon became lovers. In 1904 Kandinsky separated from his wife and moved in with Münter. In the late summer of 1908, Münter and Kandinsky visited Murnau and the next year Münter bought a house that came to be known as Russenvilla. Until the outbreak of World War I, she and Kandinsky spent the summer months living and working there. The present picture was painted in 1912, on one of the three visits that Kandinsky made to Murnau during the months of May, June and August, and just three years before the end of their relationship.

FALL
JAMIE WYETH (b. 1946)
The Headlands of Monhegan Island, Maine
oil on canvas
Painted in 2007

Following in the footsteps of his father Andrew Wyeth and grandfather N.C. Wyeth, Jamie Wyeth gathered inspiration from the local people and scenery of Maine and Monhegan Island throughout his career. In this scene Wyeth paints the annual post-Halloween event of throwing carved pumpkins into the sea. Spooky carved faces hurtle towards the sea and smash on the rocks. Painting familiar subjects, places and people that surround his everyday life, show how Wyeth’s unique visual language turns the ordinary into the extraordinary through color, perspective and his slightly surrealist imagination.

WINTER
The Property of a Distinguished Private Collection
SALOMON VAN RUYSDAEL (1600/03-1670)
Skaters on the frozen river Lek, the town of Vianen beyond
oil on canvas
Dated '1653'

Ruysdael captures here the distinctive posture and balance of those on the ice, as well as the awkward sitting and adjusting of laces that accompanies the preparations. Along the river are tents, from which wares were sold to those traveling or frolicking. Ruysdael painted around 20 winter scenes, this one showing a skating scenes at Vianen in the province of Utrecht. The skyline is distinguished by Batestein castle, depicted against a bright blue sky and the vibrant colours of a crisp winter day. This picture was once owned by Paul Cambon ambassador to Great Britain (1898–1920) and instrumental in the formation of the Anglo-French alliance, the Entente Cordiale.