Snowflakes have been falling from the sky for two billion years. Yet it wasn’t until the 15th and 16th centuries that the delicate ice crystals began to appear in European art, first in illuminated devotional books and later in the stunning paintings of Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
Not only is Bruegel the first major European artist to illustrate falling snow, he is the first Renaissance artist to place the Holy Family in a winter setting.
In the painting Adoration of the Magi in the Snow, Bruegel depicts the Holy Family in a 16th-century Netherlandish village. On the far left, inside a ramshackle building, Mary and Joseph shield Baby Jesus from the biting cold.
Several villagers wait patiently to get a glimpse of the newborn. Meanwhile, everyone else goes about their daily routines—collecting water, trimming willow branches, and sledding on the icy river. Could Bruegel be suggesting that miracles happen every day, but we fail to notice them?
Off in the distance, armed men are gathering near a castle. Are they soldiers? Or perhaps hunters? When this painting was made, Spanish dominance over the Low Countries was creating so much resentment, it would lead to war within five years. What’s more, heavy snowfalls were causing crop failures. This was a bleak period for European peasants.
Yet the village appears warm and inviting, largely due to the artist’s depiction of snow. In one of the most convincing winter scenes ever painted, Bruegel uses golden highlights and blue shadows to model a vast blanket of white.
Even the foreboding sky looks beautiful on this holy day.
When snow feels cold as ice
During the 1830s, the renowned woodblock printmaker Utagawa Kuniyoshi made a series of paintings that collectively tell the story of Nichiren, one of the most influential and controversial monks in Buddhist history.
In the painting Nichiren in Snow at Tsukahara, Kuniyoshi portrays the social reformer in exile due to his polemical views on church and state. Nichiren is shown walking alone on Sado Island in the Sea of Japan, where it seems even natural forces have united against him.
An icy wind whips through his garments as he struggles to climb uphill, his bare legs ankle-deep in the snow. The artist is using a snowstorm to symbolize the cold reality facing Nichiren, condemned to live alone in an abandoned temple located in a graveyard.
To make this woodblock print, Kuniyoshi used over a dozen ink colors in a stamping process that requires a separate block of hand-carved wood for each shade. He cut dozens of notches into each block, allowing small circles of white paper to peek through the ink, resembling snowflakes.
This particular ukiyo-e print became so popular, admirers urged Kuniyoshi to convert his preliminary sketch into a tattoo.
A whiter shade of pale
When we think of snowflakes, we usually visualize them as white. But in fact, snowflakes are translucent. Each six-sided ice crystal reflects light, diffusing all the colors in the spectrum.
The French Impressionists understood this visual phenomenon. It’s one reason why their effets de neige (effects of snow) are some of the most beautiful and daring paintings created during the second half of the nineteenth century.
The winter scenes painted by Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, and their counterparts deliver a masterclass in how to depict snow imbued with reflected color.
If the sky is blue, that blue must show up in the snow. In the morning, there is also green and yellow in the sky and these colors must also show up. In the evening, red and yellow are in the sky and must be reflected in the snow.
French Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir
To paint Rooftop View (Snow Effect), Gustave Caillebotte studied the rooftops of Paris on a dreary winter afternoon. In his unique composition, snow blankets everything in the iconic cityscape—every mansard roof, dormer window, and chimney stack. Empty streets heighten the feeling of frozen silence.
In contrast, Winter; Woman with a Muff captures a fleeting moment of transcendent beauty. Impressionist Berthe Morisot shows us a Parisian women bundled up in the colors of the season, ready to brave a winter snowstorm. One art critic said, “I have seen nothing more delicate in painting.”
However, another critic thought Morisot’s diaphanous brushwork went too far:
Mademoiselle Morisot has reduced painting to its simplest expression. Everything is hardly indicated, and everything is charming. But, honestly, she leaves too much to the imagination. It is time to put an end to this pursuit, unless one wishes to reduce painting to a dreamlike state.
Art critic Eugène VĂ©ron, “L’Art,” 1880
If this is a dream, please don’t wake me
Russian-born artist Wassily Kandinsky had an “aha” moment while he was watching Wagner’s opera Lohengrin in Moscow. It occurred to him that paintings could stir our emotions in much the same way music does.
Importantly, Kandinsky had a rare neurological condition called synesthesia which can cause people to “hear” color. When he saw green, the most tranquil of all colors, he heard the soothing sounds of a violin. When he saw violet, he heard the deep notes of a bassoon. Light blue evoked the airy notes of a flute.
So he started painting as if he were orchestrating a symphony of colors. In the painting Winter Landscape I, he uses fairytale colors to convey the magic of freshly fallen snow at sunset. A slushy, lavender footpath lures the viewer home in time for dinner.
We view the painting as a landscape, although Kandinsky’s unnatural colors and unblended brushstrokes reduce its relationship to reality. Like Matisse, he is using color to express the idea that feelings are more important than material things.
I had little thought for houses and trees. I drew colored lines and blobs on the canvas with my palette knife, making them sing just as powerfully as I knew how.
Wassily Kandinsky, “Kandinsky,” 2007
Silence, broken by the sound of a shovel
In 1945, Beijing-born artist Zao Wou-Ki moved to Paris and fell in love with French Impressionism and European Expressionism. However, it was the innovative paintings of Paul Klee that inspired him to merge Eastern and Western traditions and break from strict figuration.
In the painting Swirling Snow, Zao combines abstract expressionism with calligraphic elements “that convey the Chinese spirit.” Splashes of blue, lavender, and orange help channel the wild energy of a snowstorm. Vaguely figural black lines amplify the impression of movement.
Zao’s brushwork, which seens effortless, delivers remarkable clarity. He creates a feeling of depth on a flat surface while boldly stepping away from the rules of perspective drawing.
“Zao Wou-Ki takes us to a place not yet defined but in abeyance, hesitant, hovering one last moment before plummeting into order,” said British art critic John Russell.
Silence, soon to be broken by the sound of a snowblower.