Four Seasons

Louis C. Tiffany|Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company|Agnes F. Northrop

ca. 1897–99 · Watercolor, gouache, graphite, and red earth chalk pencil on on white wove paper formerly overmatted with original warm grey window matt · The American Wing

Northrop collaborated with her mentor and the founder of Tiffany Studios, Louis Comfort Tiffany, on this magnificent design for a window commissioned for Walter Jennings’s Long Island home, Burrwood. In Northrop’s memoirs, she reflected that in the glass studio, “I managed to make a place for myself in flowers and landscape (I did not do Figure).” Here, Tiffany himself designed the central allegorical figures representing the four seasons, while Northrop created the floral border, and both signed the drawing. In the border, rectangular panels frame twelve varieties of flowers, painted with Northrop’s remarkable eye for detail and signifying the twelve months of the year. These panels, drawn relatively early in her career, display the variety of floral motifs that Northrop would turn to again and again, forming a visual dictionary of sorts. Naturalistic and vibrant flowers dominated the windows Northrop designed for Tiffany over the next two decades, and, along with landscapes, were the subject matter on which she built her reputation.

Artist

Louis C. Tiffany|Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company|Agnes F. Northrop

Date

ca. 1897–99

Medium

Watercolor, gouache, graphite, and red earth chalk pencil on on white wove paper formerly overmatted with original warm grey window matt

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Purchase, Walter Hoving and Julia T. Weld Gifts and Dodge Fund, 1967