Fresh snow in the sun reflects 80 to 90 percent of the light that hits it, and a painting hangs in far weaker light.
So painters of winter scenes make snow look bright by contrast, setting darker, colder tones beside it, often in its shadows.
Those shadows look blue because snow takes on the color of the light that reaches it, and in shadow that light comes only from the blue sky.
When the sun is low, the sunlit snow turns pink or orange.
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How These Were Chosen
A winter picture earns its place here in one of two ways. Either snow, ice or winter weather fills most of the canvas, with small figures or none, or the picture shows people at their daily tasks in the cold. Snow scenes that only frame a battle or a portrait did not qualify.
12. John Henry Twachtman, Winter Harmony (about 1890 to 1900)
A stream winds back through a snowy wood, between two steep white banks. Its water is still open. It holds pale blue and gray reflections of the banks above it.
Overhead, a few branches keep their last leaves, in touches of tan and pale pink. John Henry Twachtman painted the scene between about 1890 and 1900. He was an American painter, born in Cincinnati. The place is his farm in Greenwich, Connecticut, or the land right around it.
Twachtman found that corner of Connecticut in the summer of 1889. He came upon Horseneck Brook and its small cascade. According to his son, he threw up his arms and cried, "This is it!"
Early in 1890 he bought the farmhouse. He went on to gather seventeen acres on Round Hill Road, outside Greenwich. For the rest of his life, his house and his land were almost his only subject.
He loved winter. To the painter J. Alden Weir, he wrote: "We must have snow and lots of it. Never is nature more lovely than when it is snowing." Again and again he painted the frozen water on his property, the brook and a spot called Hemlock Pool.
Here the whole canvas keeps to a narrow band of cool, pale tones. There is white, gray, blue and lilac, warmed by a golden beige. Twachtman laid the paint on loosely.
The strokes stay visible, so the banks, the trees and the far wood melt into one soft haze. Curators at the Pennsylvania Academy link the same restraint in his canvas Snow to Japanese prints and to the American painter James McNeill Whistler.
The stream shows how tight that range really is. It is barely a shade darker than the snow on its banks, yet it still reads at once as water.
A few small accents are darker still: a conifer at upper right, a leaning trunk below it, and a rock half buried in the snow at lower right.
At a Glance
Artist: John Henry Twachtman (1853 to 1902)
Painted: About 1890 to 1900
Medium: Oil on canvas
Where to see it: National Gallery of Art, Washington (currently not on view)
About This Painting
What is Winter Harmony by John Henry Twachtman?
Winter Harmony is a snow landscape that entered the National Gallery of Art in 1964, a gift of the Avalon Foundation. Around 1900, Mrs. Lucius Horatio Bigelow had bought it directly from the painter.
Did John Henry Twachtman paint other snow scenes?
Yes, many. The Art Institute of Chicago owns Icebound, a frozen stream that is probably on his Connecticut property. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts owns Snow, a square canvas from about 1895 to 1896.
What is John Henry Twachtman's Snow Scene?
Twachtman's Snow Scene is a winter view, painted about 1890 to 1895 and measuring 40.6 by 50.8 centimeters. It belongs to the Carmen Thyssen Collection and hangs at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.
11. Camille Pissarro, The Boulevard Montmartre on a Winter Morning (1897)
Seen from high above, a Paris boulevard runs straight into a gray haze. Trees line both sides of the boulevard. Cabs and omnibuses move as dark blocks over a pale roadway.
People in dark coats crowd the sidewalks. A tall streetlamp stands in the middle of the road.
A small kiosk rises from the sidewalk at right. Camille Pissarro painted the view in 1897. The street is the boulevard Montmartre, in Paris.