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.
Accession Number
2002.155.1
Medium
oil on canvas
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.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
Gift of the Rizik Family
Tags
Painting Baroque (1600–1750) Oil Painting Canvas Italian
Background & Context
Background Story
Corrado Giaquinto (1703-1766) was an Italian painter of the late Baroque period who worked in Rome, Naples, and Madrid, known for his decorative allegorical and religious paintings. Winter from c. 1740-50 is one of a series of paintings representing the four seasons that Giaquinto painted as decorative works for an aristocratic patron. The allegorical figure of Winter is rendered in the graceful, decorative style that distinguishes Giaquinto's work from the more dramatic Baroque manner of his Roman predecessors, and the c. 1740-50 date places this in his most productive period as a decorator.
Cultural Impact
Giaquinto's Seasons paintings are important in the history of 18th-century Italian decorative painting because they demonstrate the graceful, Rococo-influenced style that he brought to the late Baroque tradition. Winter shows Giaquinto softening the dramatic manner of the Roman Baroque with the graceful decorative quality that would characterize the Rococo period, creating a style that influenced decorative painting throughout Italy and Spain.
Why It Matters
Winter is Giaquinto's late Baroque decorating with Rococo grace: the allegorical figure of Winter rendered in the elegant, decorative manner that softens the dramatic Roman Baroque with Rococo influence. The c. 1740-50 painting demonstrates the transition from Baroque drama to Rococo elegance in Italian decorative painting.