Nature and the Seasons          

 

The all-important lotus blossom on ancient Egyptian monuments, the wintry skies and frolicking ice skaters that endlessly populate chilly canvases from Holland, the delicately delineated change of seasons on Japanese silk screens that encompass fundamental ideas of Buddhism, the drunken Bacchante festivals of wine harvesting on Roman sarcophagi are but a few of the ways art illustrates the integral connection of the seasons to everyday life for every person in the world until the modern era.  Let us dive into a time before air conditioning and electric lights, when people lived by the rising and setting of the sun and saw in the leaves, trees, harvests, and flowers all the wonder so much lost to modern city dwellers.