Winter Scenes: Capturing Snowy Landscapes in Art

Winter wonderlands conveyed through paint are some of the most captivating of the landscape genre, but they are also the most difficult to render convincingly. From challenging atmospheric conditions to complicated color palettes, snowy landscapes require incredibly talented artists to convey their splendor successfully. 

No need for snowshoes on this trek through some of the most scintillating winter landscapes in art history. We’ll showcase how artists were capable of capturing both mood and beauty through some of the masters of the field. 

Diving into the work of these talented artists begins with a look at the history of winter landscape painting that began in the Renaissance era. Landscape painting became increasingly popular in the 16th century as artists sought new subjects to explore. Northern European artists were particularly drawn to the field as their local landscape was awash with spectacular natural features from sweeping mountain summits to expansive verdant lake valleys. 

As the appeal of such scenes grew, artists continued to explore the genre in novel ways. From the majesty of nature’s grandeur as captured by the artists of Romanticism to the Impressionist’s study of light and atmosphere, snowy landscapes proved to be a perfect source of visual study. 

Techniques and Challenges for Winter Landscape Painting

As more artists experimented with painting snowy landscape scenes, it became clear that the field was not for the faint-hearted. Winter landscape painting proved remarkably challenging and required skill in special techniques to convey a believable vista. Some of these challenges included: 

Color and Texture

The white hue of snow is one of its most characteristic features, but working with white paint can be particularly difficult. Pure white can overwhelm and wash out a winter landscape, but variations that are too warm might be equally problematic. Thus, artists wanting to create a winter landscape need to find the ideal blend of colors to capture winter majesty. The same goes for texture. Freshly fallen snow has a fluffy feel, while older snow can appear crusty or icy after a temperature dip, both textures requiring incredible precision to render in painting.  

Light and Shadow

In addition to the appearance of snow in a winter landscape, artists also need to capture the way light plays on its surfaces. The dappling of sunlight through trees – which can require a lighter color – or the suggestion of shadow falling across snowy surfaces – that might mean using blues or purples – requires an artist to carefully study the play of light and establish the time of day at which they wish to set their snowy scene.

The Most Wondrous Winter Landscape Painters 

Despite these challenges, artists over the centuries embraced the winter landscape and in so doing created some of the most striking snowy scenes in history. Let’s take a closer look at some of these iconic examples. 

Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Hunters in the Snow (1565) 

Often credited with popularizing the field of genre painting in the 16th century, Netherlandish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder created a wide variety of scenes of everyday life. One of his most celebrated is Hunters in the Snow (1565), which depicts the return of a group of hunters as they trudge through a snowy landscape at dusk. Though their haul from the wintery hunt is modest, a sense of triumph is implied by Bruegel’s positioning of the group at the lower left of the scene as they crest the hill that leads home. This allowed Bruegel to devote the majority of the painting to the view of the valley below, where a bustling village comes to life via a sea of figures ice skating. 

Overall the scene has a sobering effect between the overcast sky and expansive and relatively barren snow-covered terrain that stretches far into the distance. That sense is enhanced by the looming magpies in the trees overhead that were symbolic in 16th-century Dutch culture of an ill omen. Bruegel nevertheless countered that sobriety of the murky horizon with a blazing fire at the far left to create a scene that was both humbling and beautiful. The capacity to channel such power from the natural landscape must have inspired his son, Pieter Bruegel the Younger, to paint similarly snow-covered scenes. 

Caspar David Friedrich’s Winter Landscape with Church (1811) 

Few artists harnessed the emotive potential of the landscape as well as the artists of Romanticism, and German painter Caspar David Friedrich was among the most talented of this generation. Using the landscape as his muse to create moody, captivating views, Friedrich successfully seduced his audience canvas upon canvas. The range of Friedrich’s emotive potential can be seen in Winter Landscape with Church (1811).

In Winter Landscape, Friedrich centered his composition around a rock outcropping with several fir trees surrounded by a thick blanket of snow. Cool blue and purple tones construct a somewhat melancholic air and carry the eye back into the seemingly endless snowy expanse that dissolves with atmospheric allure and is interrupted only by the suggestion of the spires of a Gothic church set in the distance. Here the majesty of the wintery landscape is clear, but a closer reading of this scene also reveals allusions to Friedrich’s Christian faith. Nestled in the first is a large crucifix, and at its base rests a man who at first glance blends into the landscape. His crutches lay strewn nearby, suggesting he is deep within a moment of religious reflection. 

Frederick Edwin Church’s Winter Scene in Hartford (1846)

Rivaling Friedrich’s emotive landscapes were those depicted by the American artists of the Hudson River School, so named for their exploration of nature along the eastern coast of the United States. Among these artists was Frederic Edwin Church who devoted much of his career to breathtaking views of the American countryside. Among his snow-centered compositions was Winter Scene in Hartford (1846), which showcases a view of a partially iced-over dam along a stream near his hometown. Warmer tones temper the frozen feel of Church’s scene that also features a young girl in the lower foreground. Her scale and placement allowed Church to illustrate his knack for capturing the sweeping splendors of nature even when documenting lesser-known views of central Connecticut. 

Utagawa Hiroshige’s Snowy Gorge at Fuji River (1842) 

Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige’s Snowy Gorge at Fuji River (1842) demonstrates the reach of artistic fascination in snowy scenes in the 19th century. Famed for his impeccable views of the Japanese landscape, Hiroshige’s Snowy Gorge woodcut pulls the viewer into a deep landscape framed by snow-capped mountain peaks amplified by the vertical format of the scroll. Just like Friedrich and Church, Hiroshige stocked his scene with small figures in boats traversing the small inlet between these mountains to remind the viewer of the grand scale of nature and humanity’s rather small role within it. 

Claude Monet’s Grainstacks: Snow Effect (1891)

The advent of French Impressionism in the late 19th century revolutionized how artists examined the natural world, and leading that charge was Claude Monet. Focused on the play of light and atmosphere in the landscape, Monet and his Impressionist colleagues went so far as to popularize the practice of plein air painting, or painting directly from nature in the landscape. This drive to study the momentary shifts in light and color that illuminate the landscape encouraged Monet by century’s end to select locations to which he could return and paint at different times of day and at various dates throughout the year. 

One such cycle of works was known as his Haystacks or Grainstacks series, which included Grainstacks: Snow Effect (1891). Inspired by the fields near his Giverny compound and perhaps also the work of his colleagues like Gustave Caillebotte and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Monet’s painting offered the viewer solemn stacks of grain stand amid a snowy plain conjured in loosened brushstrokes and simplified palette forced by the challenging atmosphere of a snowy landscape capped by winter cloud cover. Working within this limited range while also working to experiment with colors, Monet added pops of color like lavender to convey hills on the horizon. This experimentation, combined with the feathery contours that suggest some of the farmstead in the distance, showcases how Monet’s revolutionary style imbued such landscape views with renewed energy.

Wassily Kandinsky’s Winter Landscape (1909)

As a testament to the lasting influence of Monet and the Impressionists, Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky’s Expressionist paintings in the subsequent century reveal the continued experimentation with color that defined early 20th-century modernism. In Winter Landscape (1909), Kandinsky applies these avant-garde ideas to a snowy scene. Using an eclectic palette, Kandinsky revealed a snow-covered landscape through a path carved toward a small dwelling in the distance. The implication of a setting sun in the far background added a layer of warmth that washed over the scene, yet Kandinsky also wove in cooler tones of deep blue and light lavender to ensure that the crisp coolness of the winter atmosphere was still tangible. These snow-centered experiments were later echoed by Kandinsky’s Expressionist colleagues including Otto Dix and Max Pechstein. 

Let it Snow: The Lasting Beauty of Winter Landscapes

While these selections are only the tip of the iceberg of the array of winter wonderlands, they illustrate nevertheless the variety of approaches that artists brought to these sparkly snow-covered landscapes. This diversity continued among contemporary painters, with artists like Peter Doig embodying the gestural style of early modernist winter scenes and David King recreating Monet’s snow-dappled grainstacks. Moreover, the brilliance of these paintings is that the snowy scenes seem as fresh and new today as they did centuries ago and are so visually precise that they can still elicit shivers from the sensation of the cold. Artists today continue to build on these legacies, pointing to the lasting appreciation of the beauty that these winter landscapes convey.