Pieter Jan van Liender

The tradition of sets of related images depicting the seasons or months of the year has its origins in medieval manuscript illumination, but became increasingly popular in the context of paintings, drawings and prints in the sixteenth century. During the 1550s and '60s, Pieter Bruegel the Elder made his famous series of paintings and print designs with seasonal subjects, and in 1580-81 Hans Bol executed the wonderful set of twelve circular drawings of the months, now in the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam¹, which seems to be the earliest set of drawings of the months to have survived intact.  

Although such themed sets of images continued to be produced during the seventeenth century, their popularity does, however, seem to have waned somewhat at that time, only to undergo a great revival in Dutch art of the eighteenth century. Since the majority of drawings and watercolours from this period that represent the months of the year are rather complete and decorative, many such sets must have been separated over the years, but none the less a certain number have remained together, including the present drawings by Van Liender, a series by Jacobus Buys that was until recently in a Boston private collection², and others by Simon Fokke (1765), H.P. Schouten (1789) and Jacob Cats (1791).  

1.  Inv. nos. MB 2005/T2 a-l; sold, from the Koenigs Collection, New York, Sotheby's, 23 January 2001, lot 11

2. Sale, New York, Sotheby's, 30 January 2019, lot 119