Winter in Fine Arts: The Colour of Snow
The depictions of snow and ice in the masterpieces of artists such as Werner Berg, Pieter Bruegel or Egon Schiele are impressive to behold. The colours range from mystical grey and blue hues to turquoise pastels.
Always in Demand: Winters from the Past
Snow and ice in landscapes and their effect on people are among the great themes in the fine arts. The grey, wintry light, which is sometimes mixed with blue and turquoise tones, inspired great artists to veritable masterpieces.
Winter in Pieter Bruegel's Paintings
A visit to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna shows that winter has always been a fascinating subject for painters. One of the most popular paintings there is “Hunters in the Snow“ by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The work is recognised as the first known European large-scale painting of a winter landscape. It captivates the viewer with its stunning contrasts: the dark clothes of the hunters in the foreground and the white, snowy landscape with mountain peaks in the background. Shimmering, greyish-green hues define the evening sky and the icy surfaces.
The detail of the painting is impressive - such as the figures on the ice: people ice skating, curling or playing snow-golf, which was very popular in Flanders. The painting is also widely regarded as a historic document of the “Little Ice Age,” as the winter of its creation, 1564/65, was said to have the lowest temperatures humans can remember.
A View from Egon Schiele’s Studio
The diffuse light of winter, which can make people and buildings seem monochrome, also fascinated the masters of expressionism. When Egon Schiele - at the age of 17 - moved into his first studio in Vienna’s Leopoldstadt near the Prater, one of his first motifs was “Häuser im Winter (Blick aus dem Atelier). (Houses in Winter (View from the studio)).“
The painting shows one of the numerous courtyards that can still be found in Vienna when you stroll through its alleys with open eyes and take a peek behind the facades. The buildings with their playful bay windows, rounded steeples and garrets in Schiele’s paintings are covered with thick snow blankets as if they were part of the architecture. Schiele’s vision of an urban winter is part of the collection of the Wiener Belvedere.
Farm Life in Winter
The German-Austrian expressionist Werner Berg was gifted with a wonderful ability to observe. The artist was born in 1904 in Wuppertal-Elberfeld, and in 1930 emigrated to Carinthia, where he purchased a remote mountain farm, the Rutarhof, close to the border with Slovenia.
In his life as well as his art, Werner Berg sought “closeness to things.” His numerous winter depictions include expressive paintings and wood engravings showing nature blanketed by snow and ice - mostly in twilight, with long shadows cast by moonlight or artificial light sources. Paintings of farmhouses highlight the loneliness and remoteness of the region. When Berg shows people in this winter landscape, they are mostly walking, hunched against the cold. Some of these images show women attending church. Reduced to a minimum, the faces and headscarves of the farmer’s wives seem archaic.
Night and winter reconstitute the large frame of landscapes, events and the human condition.