Flora Yukhnovich’s Four Seasons

Flora Yukhnovich’s Four Seasons

Site-Specific Installation Responds to Frick’s Holdings by François Boucher

September 3, 2025, through March 9, 2026

New York (August 6, 2025) — The Frick Collection is pleased to announce a new site-specific installation by artist Flora Yukhnovich (b. United Kingdom, 1990), in dialogue with François Boucher’s series The Four Seasons, from the museum’s permanent collection. Her mural will cover the walls of the Frick’s Cabinet Gallery, a reimagined space dedicated to the presentation of small-scale displays and contemporary interventions. Yukhnovich will respond to Boucher’s work in her characteristic painting style, a blend of representation and abstraction which draws from art historical traditions while boldly reinterpreting them. Her immersive, energetic works—inspired by the French Rococo, Italian Baroque, and Abstract Expressionist movements—are both modern and timeless, reflecting a rigorous engagement with the legacies of Western painting.

“Flora’s clear admiration for the work of Boucher—an artist who is well represented in our collection—makes her a natural fit for this project. We are excited to have her fill the walls of our new Cabinet Gallery, which was previously home to the Boucher Room, recently reinstalled on the museum’s second floor,” stated Xavier F. Salomon, the Frick’s Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, who initiated the collaboration.

Commented Yukhnovich, “Painting this mural for the Frick has felt like stepping through one of Boucher’s portals into a world that’s both imagined and eerily familiar. I wanted to create a continuous landscape that blurs the boundaries between past and present—a space where ornamentation, fantasy, and reality collide. It’s been thrilling to explore how the language of the Rococo can speak so powerfully to our own curated, hyper-visual world.”

Visitors will be able to view Boucher’s Four Seasons nearby in the West Vestibule, where the series hung when the Frick family resided in the home. The Cabinet, which will house the installation, is also the former site of the museum’s Boucher Room, an eighteenth-century French period room featuring another series by Boucher, The Arts and Sciences—now a highlight of the newly opened second-floor galleries.

Yukhnovich’s mural is the latest in a series of responses to the Frick’s permanent collection by living artists. Past presentations of this kind include Porcelain, No Simple Matter: Arlene Shechet and the Arnhold Collection (2016–17); Elective Affinities: Edmund de Waal at The Frick Collection (2019); Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masters (2021–22, Frick Madison); Propagazioni: Giuseppe Penone at Sèvres (2022, Frick Madison); Olafur Eliasson and Claude Monet (2022–23, Frick Madison); Nicolas Party and Rosalba Carriera (2023–24, Frick Madison); and Porcelain Garden: Vladimir Kanevsky at The Frick Collection (through November 17, 2025).

BOUCHER’S FOUR SEASONS

François Boucher (1703–1770) made the four paintings known as The Four Seasons in 1755 for Madame de Pompadour, King Louis XV’s long-term official mistress. Their original location is unknown, but their unusual shape suggests that they were used as overdoors, no doubt in one of Pompadour’s many properties in France. Instead of the labors that traditionally illustrate the theme of the four seasons, Boucher depicts delightful amorous encounters in joyous colors.

In Spring, a youth adorns his lover’s hair with flowers. A group of voluptuous bathing nudes represents Summer. In Autumn, a young man offers a bunch of grapes to his fashionable beloved. And in Winter, a man pushes the heroine through the snow on an elaborate sleigh. This combination of luxury and seduction—all treated in a fanciful, even humorous manner—is typical of the artist.

Henry Clay Frick came into possession of The Four Seasons in 1916, when he acquired the series directly from the American heiress and art dealer Virginia Bacon. He had long admired the works, which had been coveted by other major collectors. That same year, Frick also acquired Boucher’s Arts and Sciences to adorn the walls of his wife’s, Adelaide Childs Frick’s, private boudoir on the mansion’s second floor. Before The Frick Collection opened to the public in 1935, this series was reinstalled in a first-floor gallery known as the Boucher Room. During the museum’s recent renovation, the entire room was returned to its original location upstairs. Boucher’s bright, playful scenes now grace both floors of the museum, delighting viewers as they did in the house a century ago.

PUBLIC PROGRAMMING

The installation will be featured in a number of engaging public programs. Yukhnovich will discuss her mural and process at a lecture in early 2026 in the museum’s new Stephen A. Schwarzman Auditorium. The display will also serve as a source of inspiration for artists of all levels in the popular free Sketch Night event series. Programming details will be shared at frick.org/programs.

ACCOMPANYING PUBLICATION

The installation will be accompanied by the publication of a new volume in the acclaimed Frick Diptych series, which illuminates a single masterpiece from the permanent collection by pairing complementary essays by a curator and a contemporary artist, musician, or other cultural luminary. This volume will feature a text by Yukhnovich and an art historical essay by Salomon on the significance of Boucher’s beloved series.  

The hardcover publication of eighty pages ($29.95, member in-store price $23.96) features forty color illustrations. The book will be published in February 2026. It may be pre-ordered online at shop.frick.org, by emailing shop@frick.org, or by calling 212.547.6849. It will also be available for purchase onsite in the Museum Shop.

ABOUT FLORA YUKHNOVICH

Born in Norwich, United Kingdom, in 1990, Yukhnovich developed her characteristic painting language as a student at City & Guilds of London Art School, where she completed her MA in 2017. Yukhnovich held solo exhibitions at the Wallace Collection in London and at Ordrupgaard in Charlottenlund, Denmark, in 2024, as well as an exhibition at the University of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum in 2023. Her work is held in prominent collections worldwide, including the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Government Art Collection, London; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

INSTALLATION SUPPORT

Flora Yukhnovich’s Four Seasons is made possible by Hauser & Wirth and Victoria Miro.