The Most Evocative and Beautiful Paintings about Spring

OK, we have to admit it. As much as we love snow, we’re kind of itching for the start of the spring season. So we decided to take a journey through the world of paintings to find the most influential, beautiful, famous and evocative masterpieces – both historical and contemporary – on the season of spring and the joys of springtime. Our correspondent Abbie Martin Greenbaum has curated a list of some of the most stunning paintings we could find that will help you get in the mood for the arrival of the spring.

Beautiful and Evocative Portraits of Spring

Spring has not quite sprung, but as the days tick closer and closer to the vernal equinox, we are impatiently waiting the arrival of warm weather. With the holidays behind us, winter can start to feel like a slow crawl towards sunshine. We are totally ready for the first day of spring!

Not surprisingly, throughout history spring has been of natural interest to many artists. Its bright and joyful quality seems to call their brushes to it. And as a result, we have many incredible paintings of gorgeous greenery and fragrant gardens to inspire us during the dark days of winter. But there are also depictions of spring fever and giddy love affairs. Rainy days. And windy ones perfect for flying a kite. Stunning abstract evocations of the very essence of spring: rebirth and rising, liberty and lightness. And joy.

The Most Evocative and Beautiful Paintings about Spring

Here are our picks for some of the most influential paintings of springtime, to help us get in the mood for spring and happily pass the time until we can shed our coats and share a picnic in the park.

Paintings of Spring Fever and Love in Bloom

In our humble opinion, a proper list of gorgeous paintings about the spring has to begin with evocative images of spring romance.

1. Springtime, 1873, Pierre-Auguste Cot 

You can find this ode to the magic of springtime romance prominently displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. First exhibited at the Salon of 1873, the picture was Pierre-Auguste Cot’s greatest success. It has been widely admired and copied in engravings, fans, porcelains and tapestries in the years since its first public display.

The painting’s first owner, hardware tycoon John Wolfe, awarded the work a prime spot in his Manhattan mansion. The notes from the Met report that “visitors delighted in ‘this reveling pair of children, drunken with first love … this Arcadian idyll, peppered with French spice.'”

2. Vignette (The Kiss), 2018, Kerry James Marshall

In a very different era, Kerry James Marshall conveys that same sense of wild abandon between two young lovers. Vignette (The Kiss) is an intimate scene of two young people sharing a passionate kiss on the steps of a building, oblivious to anything else that may be happening around them.

The vignette was inspired by a real couple the artist saw while driving in a suburb of Chicago. The area was most often associated in the news with crime, and he was moved to memorialize a very different view of the neighborhood and its residents.

Allegorical Paintings celebrating the arrival of spring

When many experts share their lists of important and influential works about spring, many are allegorical images of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. Or personifications of the season – which almost always seem to be young ingenues. 

3. Primavera, 1477-82, Sandro Botticelli 

Probably one of the most-discussed works of art in the world, this painting resides in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, alongside the Renaissance master’s Birth of Venus. The painting was likely commissioned by Botticelli’s employers, the Medici, for the wedding of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco.

Though the exact meaning of its image remains the subject of much speculation, it is understood that it is likely an allegory of the season’s arrival. And that the figures are Venus, Mercury and Cupid – as well as Flora, the goddess of spring.

4. Spring (1860), Paul Cézanne 

This painting is the first from the Romantic artist’s series of murals entitled “The Four Seasons.” The execution of these murals, helped convince the artist’s stern banker father to allow his son to go to Paris to study art. You can visit this piece in Paris today, in the Musée du Petit-Palais.

5. Spring (1896), Alphonse Mucha

Part of the artist’s renowned series “The Seasons,” this is Mucha’s personification of spring. While he was not the first artist to create such a seasonal quartet, his interpretations gained great  interest in their time. In his interpretation, spring is portrayed as the most innocent of the four women in the series.

6. Spring (1881), Édouard Manet

One of the greatest works of Manet’s career, this painting was first displayed at the 1882 Paris Salon, and now resides in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. The woman shown is the French actress Jeanne DeMarsy, who is intended to appear here as an embodiment of spring. It was created as part of an allegorical series representing each of the seasons, but Manet passed away before he completed “Summer” or “Winter.”

Greenery and The Great Outdoors

Personally, when we’re seeking paintings about spring, the ones that make us feel the most joy are often landscapes filled with pastel flowers and deep green grass. Its what the Impressionists are best known for, but there are artists from every era who capture this sense of rebirth and joy. City or country, here are some of our absolute favorite spring landscapes.

7. Fine Day, Yokoyama Taikan

Yokoyama Taikan (1868-1958) was one of the leading nihonga (Japanese-style) artists of the Meiji and Showa eras. 

In this lovely work, the artist achieves  a magical quality that feels almost like a fairy tale. As one curator notes “on the bank where horsetails and dandelions grow, a crab suddenly appears.” The background is dreamy and serene, and you can almost feel the warmth of the sun on your face as you observe it.

8. Springtime (1872), Claude Monet 

The impressionist master Monet is perhaps the person whose work we most associate with the season of spring. Here he paints his first wife, Camille Doncieux, who often served as the subject of his art during their marriage, and who also modeled for other Impressionists.

The scene is set in Argenteuil, where they lived at the time. The painting is currently in the collection of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland.  

9. Study for Past Times, Kerry James Marshall

 

10. Pink Orchard (1888), Vincent Van Gogh 

This work is part of a series called ‘Flowering Orchards,” which the Dutch painter completed during a spring spent in Arles, France.

The pieces show an amalgamation of Impressionist and Divisionist art styles, as well as the influence of Japanese woodcuts. Three of the flower paintings were assembled into a triptych, of which Pink Orchard is the first.

11. Boulevard Montmartre Spring, Camille Pissarro

One of Pissarro’s fabled Paris street scenes, “Boulevard Montmartre, Matinée de Printemps,” from 1897, is part of a widely-acclaimed series in which the artist recorded the world unfolding outside the window of the Grand Hotel de Russie.

April Showers

We love these dreamy, misty paintings of rainy spring days – whether in Paris or in the English countryside, they remind us that even a grey day can be astonishingly beautiful.

12. Paris Street; Rainy Day (1877), Gustave Caillebotte

Caillebotte strikingly captured a vast, stark modernity rain-washed mood the painting dominated the celebrated Impressionist exhibition of 1877

The oil painting is part of the permanent collection at the Art Institute of Chicago.

13. The Arrival of Spring (2011), David Hockney

Many of David Hockney’s best-known landscape paintings capture views of the English countryside through the changing seasons. 

Its a lovely journey down the country roads in the Yorkshire woods.

Spring Flowers

It’s almost a cliche to think of paintings about spring to be filled with blooms. We found these abstract and unexpected images as interesting takes on the theme that caused us to think about spring flowers in a new way.

14. Spring Flowers in Washington D.C. (1969), Alma Thomas 

Thomas’s abstract expressionist works are vivid and colorful, and her portrayal of spring flowers is no exception. Interestingly, this painting was originally purchased by a college student in 1969, and remained in his private collection until he passed away in 2012.

15. Spring (1923-24), Georgia O’Keeffe

O’Keeffe painted multiple images titled “Spring.” The artist was married to the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, and in this work, she depicts the building that contained his darkroom. There are interesting differences between her version and Stieglitz’s photograph of the same subject, with O’Keeffe’s being the one that shows the flowering trees behind the house. You can view her portrayal at the Art Institute of Chicago.  

16. Courtesy of a Saint

Lynette Boakye is one of our favorite contemporary artists, and this painting is a lovely example of her work that makes us think of springtime.

17. Large Shelf Still Life (2017), Jonas Wood 

Jonas Wood created a monumental painting of potted plants on a shelf for a High Line public art commission in New York City some years ago. This smaller rendition reminds us of the fun of going to a plant shop and bringing a talisman of spring inside.

Kite-Flying

There’s real joy in the idea of flying a kite on the first fine day of spring. And it doesn’t require living in a rural area, as many artists have demonstrated with great verve.

18. Flying Kites, Montmartre, William James Glackens

 

19. Kevin the Kiteman, 2016, Jordan Casteel

Rising star Jordan Casteel captures the childlike spirit of spring and kite-flying perfectly in this work. The setting is Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard in Harlem, and the vibe is universally joyful.

Spring Awakening and New Beginnings

Finally, some of the most evocative and beautiful paintings of the spring season are filled with whimsy, charm and grace.

20. Betty Swanwick, Primavera and the Sleeping Gardener (1978)

the gardener, asleep near a bonfire, is dreaming of spring. Beside him, a woman based on Flora in Botticelli’s Primavera, scatters flowers –

he may awake and forget the season (until he realises how cold he is). It’s part of the Royal Academy of Art’s collection in London.

21. Spring (1965), René Magritte 

This oil on canvas painting by the great Surrealist Magritte 

The Most Beautiful Paintings about Spring

That’s it – our picks for some of the most beautiful and moving paintings about the glorious season of spring and the joys of springtime. What’s your favorite painting on this topic?

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Abbie Martin Greenbaum grew up in New York City and currently lives in Brooklyn, where she drinks a lot of coffee and matches roommates together for a living. At Oberlin College, she studied English and Cinema, which are still two of her favorite things, along with dessert and musical theater. She believes in magic.

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