The Four Seasons, by Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919). 1875. Pencil and watercolour heightened with bodycolour, one heightened with gold. 8 x 4¼ in. (20.3 x 10.8 cm.) each. Private collection, image ©2016 Christie's Images Limited, reproduced here by kind permission (right click disabled; not to be downloaded).
A Woman in Green Drapery. Oil on panel; 141⁄8 x 57⁄8 in. (35.9 x 15 cm.). Private collection, image ©2022 Christie's Images Limited, reproduced here by kind permission (right click disabled; not to be downloaded).
Murray's watercolours of The Four Seasons were painted in Rome in 1875 based on an inscription of the third panel "C.F.M. 75/ ROMA." Spring is personified as a classical maiden clad in green in a verdant green landscape. Summer is shown as a woman in white reading a book. Autumn is a figure wearing the fall colour of yellow and holding fruit she has picked in the folds of her dress. Winter is clad in a frigid blue dress and cloak that is being buffeted by the harsh winter winds as she stands beside a fire for warmth. This series looks back to Murray's earlier illustrations for Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter for William Morris's poem "The Lapse of the Year" on p. 40of Morris's illustrated manuscript A Book of Verse of 1870.
When The Four Seasons sold at Christie's in 2016 their experts noted that:
Personifications of the seasons were a popular subject for the Pre-Raphaelites and the artists of the Aesthetic movement, as they had been for the quattrocento artists who inspired them. Usually depicted as beautiful women, as here, the figures hold attributes and are placed in settings which identify their subjects. Stylistically the present group relate to The Garland, a series of six watercolours painted by Edward Burne-Jones in 1867, based on his designs for stained glass in the Green Dining Room at the South Kensington Museum, one of which was sold at Christie's South Kensington in London on 4 September 2014, lot 45.
Burne-Jones had painted his own series of The Four Seasons in watercolour and gouache in 1869-71 for Frederick Leyland, intended for the dining room at his London home at 22 Queen's Gate. Simeon Solomon's The Four Seasons of c.1877 were apparently initially conceived for the entrance hall in some scheme of interior decoration but at an unknown location. Solomon's series recently sold at Christie's, London on July 11, 2013 and then later at Bonhams, Knightsbridge, on December 14, 2021, lot 231. Walter Crane's A Masque for the Four Seasons of c.1905-09 is in the collection of the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt.
Studies for The Four Seasons
Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, all in blue and white wash with pencil, from the Collection of Princeton University Art Museum. Spring: 7 15/16 x 4 1/2 inches (20.1 x 11.4 cm); Summer: 7 7/8 x 4 1/2 inches (20 x 11.4 cm); Autumn: 7 15/16 x 4 1/2 inches (20.1 x 11.4 cm); and Winter: 7 7/8 x 4 1/2 inches (20 x 11.4 cm). Collection of Princeton University Art Museum. Images courtesy of the museum. [Click on these images to enlarge them.]
There are a number of studies for The Four Seasons in the collection of the Princeton University Art Museum, including the four studies above, in blue and white wash with pencil on brown paper [object nos. x1948-1452 to 1455]. The figures in the final composition resemble but do not follow exactly the composition of these preliminary drawings. Princeton also owns a pencil drawing for the figure of Summer [object no. x1948-1511]. Murray's oil painting of the left-hand figure for Spring, entitled A Woman in Green Drapery, sold at Christie's, London, on 14 July 2022, lot 42, is shown on the right just below the series at the top of this page. In addition to Spring in The Four Seasons, this painting of an unidentified female subject closely resembles the decorative panels Murray painted for the Green Dining Room at the South Kensington Museum (V&A). This room, decorated in 1866-67, was one of the first major commissions for Morris, Marshall & Faulkner & Co. A Woman in Green Drapery also resembles the decorative panels for painted furniture that Murray did for the firm of Collinson & Lock in the 1870s.
Related Material
Bibliography
Brian Sewell – Critic and Collector. London: Christie's (27 September 2016): lot 87.
Important Victorian & British Impressionist Art. London, Christie's (11 July 2013): lot 49.
The Isabel Goldsmith Collection: Selected Pre-Raphaelite and Symbolist Art. London: Christie's, 14 July 2022, lot 43.
Morris, William. A Book of Verse. A facsimile of the manuscript written in 1870 by William Morris. London: Scolar Press, 1981. 40.
The Neil Wilson Collection. A Romantic Vision. London: Christie's South Kensington (September 4, 2014): lot 45, 30-31.
Created 14 February 2026