The Four Seasons by Flora Yukhnovich: Reimagined Rococo in Focus

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Flora Yukhnovich has built her reputation on a clear idea: taking the visual language of eighteenth-century Rococo and reworking it with a contemporary sensibility that feels neither nostalgic nor ironic. Her artwork draws on the great decorative painters of that era, yet never slips into imitation. The paintings look back at history but feel completely modern. Her latest project, Four Seasons, is currently on view at The Frick Collection in New York until 9 March 2026. It comprises large murals that surround the viewer, based on a set of small paintings by François Boucher, and is her most ambitious work to date.

A Language Built from the Past

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Yukhnovich, born in Norwich in 1990, completed her MA at City & Guilds of London Art School in 2017. She has spent her career treating Rococo not as a historical style to reference but as a living tradition to develop. Among her primary references are names such as Boucher, Fragonard, Lancret, and Tiepolo — painters whose decorative ambition was dismissed for much of the twentieth century. Critical opinion has since shifted, and Yukhnovich’s work has been part of that change. She has said that standing in front of Boucher’s paintings at the Wallace Collection in London was a turning point. The softness of the light, the mood of pleasure running through the work, and the sheer confidence of the brushwork made a lasting impression.

For the Frick commission, Yukhnovich looked to Boucher’s Four Seasons of 1755 — four small paintings made as a set for Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of King Louis XV. They now hang in the Frick’s West Vestibule. Each is roughly half a metre high. Yukhnovich’s Summer panel alone measures 255.9 by 621.7 centimetres. Both cycles are on view together, and seeing them side by side sharpens the impact of both.

Inside the Room

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Yukhnovich’s versions of the seasonal scenes are entirely non-figurative, allowing the viewer to inhabit the space suggested by Boucher’s originals. She works in oil on mural cloth, prepared and stretched like wallpaper, building the surface up in layers. She starts with thin, translucent paint in soft pinks, powder blues, and pale greens, then works over that with broader, more physical brushstrokes. Up close, the surface looks loose and energetic; step back, and the seasonal mood comes into focus. The technique borrows from Rococo’s sense of surface and pleasure, as well as the freer handling of twentieth-century abstract painting. Each of the four panels demonstrates this directly.

Boucher’s Spring shows a shepherd boy crowning his companion with flowers, a quiet, intimate scene set in soft foliage and light.

Yukhnovich’s version fills the wall with pale pinks and violets, floral forms spreading outward, evoking growth, light, and the feeling of something opening up.

Summer brings a shift in scale and energy. Boucher shows three women bathing beside a woodland fountain, the mood warm and unhurried.

Yukhnovich’s Summer is the largest panel in the room. Petals and foliage push outward across the surface; the brushwork speeds up; the palette moves into deep greens and golds. Where Boucher gives you leisure, Yukhnovich gives you the full weight of the season.

Autumn is quieter but no less deliberate. Boucher’s painting shows a young man offering grapes to a shepherdess, the colours warm and rich.

Yukhnovich moves into burnt orange, deep purple, and earthy reds. The paint is thicker, the brushwork broader.

Winter is the most restrained of the four. Boucher shows a woman reclining on a swan-shaped sleigh, pushed by an attendant in Tartar dress — she glances back at the viewer.

Yukhnovich responds with blues, violets, and pearlescent whites; the marks are sparse; a pale sun hangs above a snow-covered path through bare trees. A hare is barely visible within the surface.

Together, the four murals turn the room into a continuous, immersive landscape. Yukhnovich’s panel paintings explore colour, pattern, and abstraction within a Rococo framework, and the Frick installation expands that vision across the entire room. Sweeping floral forms, seasonal colours, and layered brushwork invite the viewer to move through the space.

The Market Behind the Work

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Yukhnovich’s market has moved quickly and held steady. Her auction debut in 2021 produced results far above estimates — one work sold for more than ten times its upper guide. Since then she has maintained a perfect sell-through rate at auction, meaning every work offered has found a buyer, which is not something many artists can say when the market softens.

Her auction record stands at £2.69 million (around $3.6 million), set in 2022 for Warm, Wet ‘N’ Wild. More recently, My Body knows Un-Heard of Songs sold at Phillips London in 2025 for £1,276,000 (around $1.7 million), within its £900,000–£1,500,000 estimate. That kind of result — solid, within range, no drama — suggests a market that has matured past the initial excitement and is building on firmer ground.

She is represented by two of the most prominent galleries in the market, Hauser & Wirth and Victoria Miro, and her work has entered major institutional collections including the Brooklyn Museum, the Hirshhorn, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. For buyers, provenance is clean and straightforward. Larger works should be inspected carefully before purchase — the scale and layered technique mean condition can vary. Her auction record covers a relatively short period, so where prices settle over the longer term is still an open question, though the trajectory so far has been consistently upward.

A Reappraisal

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Rococo was treated as a minor tradition for most of the past two centuries — pretty, perhaps, but not serious. Yukhnovich has spent her career demonstrating otherwise, and her body of work is the most compelling case for that reappraisal.

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Photo credits (right-hand side): © The Frick Collection.

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