the winter landscape

early this morning, my daughter and i were looking out at the backyard to see if any of the baby carrots i chuck out there in the morning and evening had been munched up by the big, brown bunny who is living somewhere near our house. as we looked she mentioned that "the backyard has no colour". of course, she's right but i pointed out to her that there are pale pinks, and washed out eggshell blues, and the lightests of violets and even yellows and oranges if you look carefully.

but i saw her point and to be fair, our experiencing of the winter landscape is often reduced to extremes of black and white and it takes time and sensitivity to the nuances to start pulling first shades of grey and then the subtle blues and violets and finally the full spectrum of colour out of this otherwise forbidding scene.

cameras have tremendous difficulty capturing the real detail of winter scenes and so it is the painters who must render these often magical images in all their muted glory. examples of this abound but i have pulled a few lovely examples from the golden fish vault for you to see . . . .

gisjbrecht leytens painted this in the early 1600's . . .



hendrick avercamp painted this in the 1620's . . .



remi van haanen painted this in the mid-1800's . . .



wassily kandinsky painted this in 1909.



lawren harris painted this in 1918 . . .