Winter

c. 1740/1750

Corrado Giaquinto

Painter, Italian, 1703 - 1766

Eight men and women, two children, and a baby sit or toil in a barren landscape under a thick blanket of clouds in this horizontal painting. The people all have pale, peachy skin, and they wear tunics and robes in shades of golden yellow, salmon or rose pink, crimson red, lapis blue, and honeydew or laurel green. A man to our left of center raises an ax high over one shoulder as he braces a sandaled foot on a fallen tree trunk. Another person squats and holds another thick log nearby, in the lower left corner of the painting. A third person reaches up to brace a bundle of logs, which are bound with a rope, across his back. A bit behind this group, at the center of the composition, two women, a man, and a baby huddle on the ground around a fire. Logs are tied to create a frame from which a big-bellied pot hangs. Closer to us and to our right, a bearded man, woman, and two children sit in the shelter of a rocky overhang. The man sips wine from a glass as he holds the bottle with his other hand. The woman holds a bowl, and the children sit in front of a pot with glowing embers. One child puts food in their mouth, and the other holds a hand up over the heat. A loaf of bread and a jug sit on a white cloth on a bench nearby. Two cows or steers stand near the arched opening of a bridge to our left, and dark blue clouds press down on snow-covered huts in the distance.

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 32

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Gift of the Rizik Family

  • Dimensions

    overall: 108.4 x 151.5 cm (42 11/16 x 59 5/8 in.)
    framed: 132.1 x 175.7 x 10.2 cm (52 x 69 3/16 x 4 in.)

  • Accession

    2002.155.1

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Comte d'Arthois, Paris.[1] (Metropolitan Galleries, New York), in 1931-1932.[2] (Nicholas M. Acquavella Galleries, New York), in 1938.[3] (Dr. Siegfried F. Aram, New York), in 1941.[4] Purchased by the Rizik family, Washington, D.C.;[5] gift 2001 to NGA.
[1] According to the 1941 exhibition catalogue (see note 4), the set of four paintings by Giaquinto, Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, was formerly in this collection.
[2] Metropolitan Galleries lent the four paintings to a 1931 exhibition in Birmingham, Alabama, and included the paintings in a 1932 exhibition in their own galleries.
[3] Acquavella Galleries lent the four paintings to a 1938 exhibition in Memphis.
[4] This dealer was Dr. Siegfried F. Aram, a German lawyer-turned-art collector and dealer, who left Nazi Germany and had a gallery on 57th Street in New York until the early 1950s (see his letter of 3 June 1955 to Dr. Edgar P. Richardson, Archives of American Art, Edgar Preston Richardson Papers, Box 1: Special Correspondence A-B, Folder: Aram, Siegfried; copy in NGA curatorial files). Aram lent the four paintings to an exhibition in San Francisco in 1941.
[5] All four paintings were purchased from a New York dealer, probably Aram, by Philip Rizik's father, who died in 1953, at which time the paintings passed with the elder Rizik's estate to his widow. When she died in 1978, her estate passed in equal shares to the Rizik's seven children. Philip, Jacqueline, and Maxine Rizik chose by mutual agreement joint ownership of the set of Qiaquinto paintings.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1931

  • Exhibition of Italian Art, Birmingham Public Library, Alabama, 1931.

1932

  • Exhibition of Italian Paintings of the 16th, 17th & 18th Centuries, Metropolitan Galleries, New York, 1932.

1938

  • Cotton Festival, New Orleans, 1938.

  • Fourth Fine Arts Exhibition, Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, Memphis, 1938, no. 16.

1940

  • San Diego Museum of Fine Arts, 1940.

1941

  • Exhibition of Italian Baroque Painting, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1941, no. 50, repro.

Wikidata ID

Q20177937

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