The Four Seasons, French School, C. 1720

The Four Seasons, French School, circa 1720.
Oils on canvas in very good condition; all four have been re-stretched and restored. 
Presented unframed.

We are once again presenting this series of four paintings following the valuable information that Mr. François Marandet, a specialist in the painting of this period, was kind enough to share with us.  His analysis and discoveries shed new light on this set. Mr. Marandet confirms that these are indeed paintings created around 1720, thereby making them nearly eighty years younger than we had previously believed. He also traces their history and origin, which is curious to say the least.
We reproduce his analysis in full below:
“The four paintings preserve the memory of a series depicting The Seasons in an allegorical manner. It all seems to have begun with a painting by Bon Boullogne (1649–1717) depicting Autumn. That painting is now lost, but the date on which it was engraved by Nicolas Chasteau, in 1712 (fig. 7), suggests that the composition had just been painted at that time. Logically, the same artist should have completed the series himself, but, curiously, it was continued by Robert Levrac-Tournières (1668–1752), a student of Bon Boullogne, who painted *Spring* and *Winter*. Here again, both compositions were engraved by Chasteau in 1712 (fig. 5 and fig. 8). A third painter, this one Dutch and entirely obscure, Pieter Van den Berge (1659–1737), painted *Summer* (fig. 6). Like Bon Boullogne’s painting, this composition is known to us only through the engraving, which again bears the date 1712. At this point, it is worth noting that *Spring*, *Summer*, and *Autumn* are linked by a sense of continuity. From one composition to the next, a figure dressed in ancient style appears beyond a balustrade, framed by a sort of trellis. In contrast, in *Winter*, the personification is depicted this time in an interior setting, and, unlike the other *Seasons* in the same series, this one wears contemporary clothing. A few years later, Levrac-Tournières produced a new version of *Spring*, as evidenced by the painting in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen (fig. 9). Given the date inscribed (1717), it could only be a new version of the painting originally engraved in 1712. But the history of this series takes on a new dimension when one realizes that Levrac-Tournières recreated an allegory of Autumn based almost entirely on his master’s model; this painting is also housed at the Rouen Museum of Fine Arts (fig. 10). The only minor difference lies in the figure, whose gaze is no longer directed toward the viewer but rather toward the bunch of grapes. The peculiar division of the Seasons in 1712 suggests certain rivalries that Levrac-Tournières’s new series confirms. The fact that *Autumn* is dated 1718 is certainly no coincidence. Since Bon Boullogne had died the previous year, he could not have objected to the reappropriation of his composition. We would now like to discover what Levrac-Tournières’s new version of *Winter* looked like, since *Summer* was undoubtedly slightly altered."