Snow Scenes in Painting and Photography

Snow Paintings

Hunters in the Snow (1565),
Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Snow is one of the most difficult things to capture correctly in a painting. Because, like water, snow reflects the colors of the sky, its shadows often appear in blues, grays, and purple hues. You seldom see bright white areas of snow in paintings. One of the earliest paintings of the wintry stuff is this one. My Dad had a large reproduction hanging in his office at Price Waterhouse in New York City. I remember admiring it, had it in my possession for a while, then simply don't remember what happened to it.

Anyway, the scene contains both snow-covered countryside and frozen ice-skating ponds. The snow has subtle light grays and the ponds reflect the greenish sky.

Winter Landscape (~1610-20), Hendrick Avercamp

Proceeding chronologically to the early 17th century, we have Winter Landscape by Dutch painter Hendrick Avercamp. This atmospheric painting is clearly from the painter's imagination, as I doubt the ice would hold the number of people, sleighs, and boats. It is reminiscent of La Place du Théâtre Français (1898) by Camille Pissarro. While Pissarro painted several such scenes from his hotel, both artists have deliberately distributed people throughout with little to no overlap.

Road to Versailles at Louvreciennes (1869),
Camille Pissarro

Pissarro was a master of atmospheric effects though he was also an Impressionist. In his series of paintings along the Boulevard Montmartre (not shown here), he captures the mist and 'silvery' streets on a rainy day in Paris. I often use such paintings in art lesson discussions with my students asking, "What’s Right or Wrong With These Paintings?" This snow painting uses light grays for the shadows across the snowy street.

Snow at Argenteuil (1874-5),
Claude Monet

The Effect of Snow at
Argenteuil (1874), Sisley

Sisley and Monet were also adept at painting winter snow scenes. Both painted scenes at Argenteuil. The houses in the background (right) almost seem like another painting when compared to the foreground brushstrokes and the falling snow.

Haystacks in the Snow (1891),
Claude Monet

The Magpie (1868-9),
Claude Monet

As for Monet, I prefer his painting with the bird perched on the fence and also his many paintings of haystacks, especially Haystacks in the Snow.

Fox in the Snow (1860),
Gustave Courbet

The Fox Hunt (1893),
Winslow Homer

Next, let's compare Courbet's Fox in the Snow (1860) with Homer's The Fox Hunt (1893). Both are rather dark depictions of snow scenes. Homer includes a menacing crow as his fox runs through deep snow.

Landscape with Snow (1888), Van Gogh

Three more of my favorite artists also painted snow scenes -- Van Gogh, Marc, and Munch. I am in awe of Van Gogh's brushstrokes and how he managed to capture the sparse dusting of snow on the fields.

Siberian Dogs in the Snow (1909-1910), Marc

Franz Marc of Der Blaue Reiter, his movement shared with fellow painter Wassily Kandinsky, loved to paint animals. Here he has painted two Siberian dogs (~Huskies?) in the snow. Notice how the dogs stand out against the snow much like polar bears when photographed in the Arctic.

Winter Landscape (1915), Munch

Finally, Edvard Munch, the Norwegian artist whose work we saw this past June while stopping in Oslo during our Baltics cruise, also painted a winter landscape. While not your traditional winter scene, he chose his own style and color scheme for his snowcapped mountains and captured the frigid atmosphere well!

Kangchenjunga (1933), Nicholas Roerich

While puzzling recently, I encountered the name of the third highest mountain in the world -- Kangchenjunga. It is found in the Himalayas and is partially in Nepal. As a transition from painting to photography, I thought it would be interesting to compare snow-covered mountains in the two mediums. Both pictures are taken from the blog, Wandering Silent Vertexes and Frozen Peaks. Almost like two paintings, Roerich blurs the foreground, creating an atmospheric foundation, and elevating the detail of the mountain in contrast.

Photography

Here is the photographic complement to Roerich's painting of Kangchenjunga. Both have captured the cold mist, one using warmer colors and puffy clouds and the other a cooler more stark expanse.

Lake Cavanaugh, Mt. Vernon, WA
Photo by Karynne Patterson

I've posted this wintry lake photo before, but my daughter did such a good job of capturing the misty clouds, the reflection, and the spattering of white snow on the trees that I had to show it again. Apparently, it's possible to PhotoShop out the telephone wires. but this one was shot using a Google phone.

My brother's wife, Karen, is a wildlife photographer that I featured in my Animal Art & Wildlife Photography post. Here's a photograph of her horse, Tapestry, running in the snow. It is clearly snowing. Notice the nearly horizontal light gray lines against the dark brown/black coat. I love the colors in the background and how the white patches on animals stand out from the white of the snow.

Here's another of Karen's photos -- Lyric the horse plowing through the deep snow. I love the movement and the kicked up powder and clumps of snow. The texture of the snow-covered branches against the faint lines of grassy twigs in the shadow provides excellent contrast in an otherwise monochromatic setting.

Famous Capricorns Throughout History

Famous Capricorn Painters

Self-Portrait (1885)
Paul Cezanne

In June of last year, I posted Art of the Zodiac & Artists' Astrological Signs. We learned that three of my favorite artists -- Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, and John Singer Sargent -- were Capricorns like me. Since the Tropical Zodiac for Capricorn runs thru 21 January, this is a good time to post about famous Capricorns. 

Here's Paul Cezanne looking like he's painting outside in his bathrobe (un peignoir) and jammies. There is some criticism of this self-portrait for being informal and unfinished.

White Roses and Cherries (1865)
Henri Fantin-Latour

Matisse has been well-covered in many of my other posts, so I am adding Capricorn painter Henri Fantin-Latour. His floral paintings have been used in my lesson plans about Manet, along with other paintings of peonies by Monet. Here is the one I show students alongside Manet's Peonies for a discussion of similarities and differences.

Capri Girl
(Among the Olive Trees, Capri)
(1879) John Singer Sargent

Capri Girl is perhaps my all-time favorite painting by John Singer Sargent. I saw it in-person with my daughter and we both had to stop and stare at it for a while. Rosina Ferrara was one of Sargent's frequent models for several of his paintings.

Capricorn -- The Sea Goat

Something I never knew about the symbology of Capricorn is that it is the Sea Goat, meaning that it is an aquatic animal that is half goat (~Alpine Ibex) and half fish. Here is a cropped photo from Getty Images of a herd of Ibexes by the sea. Maybe their back legs become tails when they get wet. Ha!

Austria, Carinthia, View of Alpine Ibex

Historic Capricorns -- In the News, Portraits,

Literature & Illustrations, Music

A year ago, I posted about Math and Science in Art highlighting an enlargement project from Glenridge Elementary School honoring Capricorn, Martin Luther King Jr. The same picture appears in My First Year of Blogging: Teaching Art, Travels, and Observations, an August 2020 post that also included Capricorn, Elvis Presley. My classroom enlarged a black-and-white poster of Elvis that subsequently appeared on a Valentine's Day bulletin board.

Photo by Ollie Atkins,
Nixon's Chief Photographer

Elvis Presley famously visited the White House in December 1970 during the presidency of Richard Nixon, coincidentally also a Capricorn. Nixon is joined by fellow Capricorn U.S. Presidents Millard Filmore, Andrew Johnson, and Woodrow Wilson, each with a mixed legacy.

The movie, Elvis & Nixon, was later released in 2016. An obscure movie...Can you name the actors?

Portrait of Newton at 46 (1689),
by Godfrey Kneller

Astronomer Sir Isaac Newton was a Capricorn, along with other scientists, including George Washington Carver, Isaac Asimov, Benjamin Franklin, and modern-day Stephen Hawking. I recently watched part of the ("Descent") episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Lt. Commander Data plays poker on the holodeck with holographic representations of Stephen Hawking, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein (a Pisces).

Duplessis' Franklin

Trumball's Hamilton

Portraits of Capricorns Ben Franklin ($100) and Alexander Hamilton ($10) appear on our U.S. currency. I posted about their Portrait Artists Duplessis and Trumball, respectively, who were responsible for the images used.

Edgar Allan Poe published his short story The Oval Portrait (originally titled Life in Death) in 1842 & again in 1845, perhaps inspiring Oscar Wilde's 1891 novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Poe was a Capricorn whose horror story was about an artist who was painting his wife's portrait not noticing her failing health. I was unable to discover the artist who drew the first of many illustrations of this story.

I wonder if you're aware that Capricorn author J.R.R. Tolkien (of Lord of the Rings fame) was also an accomplished artist and illustrator. Here's one of his drawings from The Hobbit.

The final Capricorn I'd like to mention is the famous rock star (musical artist), David Bowie. While in Dublin, Ireland in June 2017, my daughter and I passed by a shop window with the likeness of Bowie from his 1973 album, Aladdin Sane. Had to take a picture since we were visiting one of his haunts just 6 months after his death. I hadn't ever noticed Bowie's unusual eyes before, one blue and one green. If you look closely, the green eye has a permanently enlarged pupil resulting from being punched by one of his friends during a fight.

Image from Aladdin Sane Album 1973,
Graphic designer, Celia Philo &
Photographer Brian Duffy

Master Artists -- Inspired Late Bloomers and Resilient, Active Seniors

Now that I'm retired and in my 60s, I have begun to rejuvenate my career by turning my attention to artful endeavors. For Christmas this year I got a portable easel and plan to do some Plein-air painting when the weather turns warmer. In honor of my own birthday, here are some of my favorite artists whose careers lasted well past retirement age (if that's a thing).

Thunderstorm (1948), Grandma Moses

Perhaps the most famous late bloomer was American Folk Artist, Anna Mary Robertson "Grandma" Moses (1860-1961), although I am less familiar with her actual work. She began her career painting in her late seventies and continued painting and exhibiting her work until the ripe old age of 101. Originally, her work was needlework pictures of life on the farm until arthritis made her try painting. Also known as a primitive artist her work lacked perspective and proportion.

Many of the great master artists I've blogged about lived well into their 70s, 80s, and 90s, remaining artistically active into their old age. Some of their best and most recognizable works came out of a desire to continue making art even as their ability to see or hold a paintbrush diminished. I particularly admire Henri Matisse for his innovative use of paper cutouts in his later Fauvist compositions.

Self-Portrait Between the
Clock and the Bed (1941),
Edvard Munch (at ~78)

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon
Chardin (Cover)

Author, Thomas Dormandy wrote Old Masters: Great Artists in Old Age, including such well-known artists as Matisse and Monet (1840-1926). The book depicts Chardin (1699-1779) on the front and Munch (1863-1944) on the back cover.

Self-Portrait in the Garden, Ekely (1942), Munch

I prefer his later incognito self-portrait (a landscape) to his Van Gogh-like bedroom scene (above). I know it's weird that I'm comparing Munch to Van Gogh, but the use of yellow and blue is at least reminiscent of Van Gogh's bedroom. I also find it amusing that Munch is standing rather straight and his head is aligned with the face of the grandfather clock. His bed looks like a hospital bed; no surprise since he painted a lot of people on their deathbeds.

I recently watched a series of YouTube videos about Monet with my daughter. For my birthday, we intend to participate in a virtual tour of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. We also watched the 2017 animated movie, Loving Vincent, in which the young son of a postmaster delivers a letter from Van Gogh (addressed to his now-dead brother Theo) to his friend, Dr. Paul Gachet. During his travels, he investigates the circumstances of Vincent's death. The present-day images are in color using backgrounds painted in Van Gogh's style, while the flashback scenes are in black-and-white. I highly recommend watching this wonderful film with its 65,000 frames.

Some artists who died young, such as Vincent Van Gogh and Jackson Pollock, never experienced old age, though their lives were full of struggle -- mental illness for Van Gogh and alcoholism for Pollock. 

Rembrandt Self-Portrait (1669)

Rembrandt struggled with poverty throughout his life, resorting to painting over 75 self-portraits, including in 1669 at age 63 just prior to his death. 

Taken from the Hindustan Times,
Illustrated by Biswajit Debnath

Edouard Manet only lived to be 51. Renoir made it to 78. Several octogenarian artists -- Degas (83), Matisse (84), Bellini and Monet (86), Titian (88), and Michelangelo (89) -- created art up until their deaths. Incredibly, Picasso (91), Bourgeois, and O'Keeffe (98) remained active in their nineties.

Dancers (1900), Edgar Degas

At the age of 50, Edgar Degas abandoned his typical subjects to study the female figure and painted primarily nudes and ballet dancers until 1912, when his studio was disbanded just 5 years prior to his death. His later works included sculpture and pastel paintings. The underpainting of his Dancers gives it a creepy, almost voyeuristic quality, though the colors blend well into the composition.

Apollo (1953), Henri Matisse

I consider myself lucky to have visited the Matisse Museum in Nice, France in 2011. While on our Baltics cruise in June 2017, we also visited the Moderna Museet in Stockholm Sweden. The star of the show was this large composition by Henri Matisse using his famous cutout shapes, created one year prior to his death.

Nymphéas et Pont Japonais
(1920-24) Monet

The Japanese Bridge
(1896), Monet

You're likely familiar with his Water Lilies series, a subject which appeared in 250 paintings for the last 30 years of Monet's life. Compare his earlier paintings of the Japanese bridge with his final versions painted a few years before his death.

Monet's eyesight was nearly gone but he still managed to leave a lasting impression.

The Beyond (1972), Georgia O'Keeffe

Let's end this post with a look at two of the final works of Georgia O'Keeffe. Although she died in 1986, her final unassisted work was in 1972 when she was going blind due to macular degeneration.

Sky Above Clouds (1965), O'Keeffe

She painted other scenes I'll call, skyscapes, like this one in 1965. I wonder how many other artists are inspired by flights on an airplane like Ms. O'Keeffe upon her return to New Mexico from her world travels.