Four Seasons

Four Seasons is a large 2012 acrylic on canvas — a woman's face fractured like cracked porcelain, each shard carrying a different temperature of colour. Wintry whites and greys sweep through her hair, autumnal oranges burn at the edges, and cool teals and spring greens move through the face itself, so that the four seasons coexist in a single countenance. The crackle motif does double duty: it maps the passage of time across the portrait while lending the surface the quality of an old fresco or weathered ceramic. Painted in a pivotal year of Viviers' development, it is among his most ambitious early canvases — expressive, technically daring, and unafraid of scale. This original has been sold.