Winter from the cycle The Four Seasons

Hollar did his first graphic sheets on the theme of the four seasons in Strasbourg, where he worked in 1628-1629 following a brief sojourn in Stuttgart, his first stop after leaving Prague in 1627. Jacob van der Heyden’s Strasbourg workshop hosted mostly Netherlandish engravers whose designs Hollar transformed with his peerless etching technique. Netherlandish landscape painting was also partial to symbolic depictions of the months or seasons, showing the rhythm of the year as well as associated human activities and activities defining the continuity of human, and all, life. Hollar started doing graphic sheets after landscape painter Herman Saftleven - Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter - in an unusual lozenge-shaped format as early as 1628. They depict typical seasonal work in wild landscapes characteristic of Saftleven’s oeuvre. Although one of Hollar’s first artworks, it displays great graphic skill.