Bug summary

When repeatedly making a plot and saving it with fig.savefig, the number of FontProperties objects keep increasing. This does not occur without the savefig.

Code for reproduction

import gc
from collections import Counter
from pathlib import Path

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

for i in range(20):
    fig, ax = plt.subplots()
    fig.savefig(Path(f"~/test_{i}.png").expanduser())
    plt.close(fig)

    gc.collect()
    object_counts = Counter(f"{type(obj).__module__}.{type(obj).__name__}" for obj in gc.get_objects())
    print(object_counts['matplotlib.font_manager.FontProperties'], end=", ")

Actual outcome

43, 50, 57, 64, 71, 78, 85, 92, 99, 106, 113, 120, 127, 134, 141, 148, 155, 162, 169, 176,

Expected outcome

43, 43, 43, 43, 43, 43, 43, 43, 43, 43, 43, 43, 43, 43, 43, 43, 43, 43, 43, 43,

Additional information

This happens with both the "Qt5Agg" and "Agg" backends.

Operating system

Windows

Matplotlib Version

3.8.4

Matplotlib Backend

Qt5Agg

Python version

3.10.11

Jupyter version

No response

Installation

pip