From art educator Birgitta Åhlund’s text “Paradise Garden - from idyll to nightmare and home again,” Bohusländer Yearbook 2014: "Nature and the cycles of the seasons are the theme of a painting of Dutch artist Jan Brueghel d.ä. contained in the Johnson Collection at Bohusläns Museum. The title of the work is The four seasons and the image’s task to figure how everything relates in nature.

At the time of its creation (c. 1600) the landscape painting was not a genre of its own, but assumed that there was an allegorical, biblical or mythological narrative staged in the landscape. In this case, an allegory is a form of narrative that uses personifications of different qualities to portray their message.

To tell about the changing seasons, the visible traces are not portrayed in nature, but the seasons are represented by four women who, through different attributes, personify each of their seasons. The women keep in a wind flute, a glowing piece of wood, an tower of obesity, and a larynx from which water flows. They represent spring, summer, autumn and winter in turn.

In the collection at the Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles there is a similar painting but entitled The Four Elements. It is made by the son Jan Brueghel d.y. who, after the death of his father, continued to produce several of his popular motifs.

When examining the matter a little closer, one can, despite their different titles, interconnect the two works. In turn, each season is associated with one of the four elements; air (spring), fire (summer), soil (autumn) and water (winter). The painting gestaltar a synthesis of this year’s alternations and the wealth offered by nature.

Jan Brueghelä. was also known for his flower paintings a genre with a well-drafted symbolism, in which art invites us to appreciate the sweeps of life and enjoy while time is. The perishability and the alternations of life are reminded in the perspectives of the seasons, the cycles of life and the heaved piece of painting." The Four Elements, Jan Brueghel d.y.

(1601-1678), Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles Landscape with Allegories of the Four Elements Landscape by Jan Brueghel the Younger Flemish, Antwerp, 1635 Oil on panel, 20 3/4 x 32 in. 71.PB.28 Four seated women Four water, air, earth, and fire are surrounded by a lush Four. The fish, from the water jug and the cornucopia of abundance cradled in the arms of the The on the right, d to the tactile The of water and earth.

The birds in the sky and the accoutThe in the foreground d to the intangible The of fire and air. The living, the still life, and the work being a unified scene, yet two figures to figures this figures. Frequent Fators, the Fpainter Frans Francken II Fthe women and F, and Jan Brueghel the Younger Fbed the F.

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