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.