Original turns of the 20th-century gold-tone "THE FOUR SEASONS" "Spring" silhouette glass print in original gold-tone frame by the artist Fidus. Each piece of art features a scene of young nudists in different seasons, spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Spring features a group dancing in a circle much like Europeans dance around maypole in spring. Framed 3.5" x 7" Hugo H?ppener dropped out of art school in 1887 to join the vegetarian and nudist commune of Bavarian painter-philosopher, Karl Diefenbach. Withina few weeks, police raided the place. Charged with nude sunbathing, young H?ppener cheerfully went to jail for eight days, before the judge dismissed him for lack of an offended complainant. Other commune members slunk away, but he stayed. After the jail episode, Diefenbach referred to him as Fidus?Latin for "the faithful one." For the rest of his life, the artist signed his works Fidus-even after he had attracted his own flock of disciples. Two years after the arrest, he went back to art school. But the memory of the happy nude Diefenbach children gamboling in the sunshine had already supplied him subject matter for the next twenty years. To illustrate a page of Diefenbach's philosophical fairy tales, he indulged the popular fad for silhouettes-something that worked well on the black-and-white printing press. His were lively silhouettes, much in demand by publishers of the new nudist movement in Germany and soon the rest of Europe. The once-popular artist has been nearly forgotten today-except among nudists who keep re-using his delightful designs. The Naturist Society has long utilized his silhouette of two boys, two girls, and a younger child startling a duck as they leap in for a skinny-dip. The triangular composition unifies the strong horizontals and verticals of the design.
