THE SEASONS, 1963
Oil on canvas. 34 x 46¾in. (87 x 120cm.)
Signed with monogram and dated lower right.
Provenance
National Trust bequest.
Exhibited
London, Royal Watercolour Society Galleries. 1963, No. 86.
Berlin, Kunstamt Wilmersdorf, 1969, No. 7, as Die Jahreszeiten.
Exeter, City of Exeter Art Gallery, 1972, No. 20.
A multi-coloured hollow sphere floats in dark space. The outer surface of the sphere is made of curved tongues, or ribbons, or filaments or peelings of colour, orientated North/South. They may even be less substantial,, perhaps no more than gaseous forms. The axis of the globe is lightly off the vertical, identifying it as the planet Earth. A white, translucent, ring encircles the Earth around the equator. The coloured strips become warmer in tone as they progress round the globe.
The astronomical seasons (but not the meteorological ones) start on the days of the solstices and equinoxes. Colquhoun had previously referred to the Autumnal Equinox (1959) and would later make astronomical and zodiacal references in Rose of the Palace of Fire (1969).
There are visual similarities between the present work and Empedocles (1943) with its petalled sphere and encircling ring and with the wall of vertical ribbons in Dark Fire (1980), suggesting a common esoteric context for all these works; a context of change, metamorphosis and the planetary influences amongst which life is lived.