Landscape with Snow

Van Gogh painted snow landscapes during his Dutch period — in Drenthe, Nuenen, and during a brief Amsterdam visit — as part of his systematic study of the effects of different atmospheric and seasonal conditions on the visible world. Snow reduced the Dutch landscape to its structural essentials: the white ground eliminating colour and revealing the forms of trees, walls, and distant buildings as pure silhouettes. He associated this simplification with the quality of Japanese woodblock prints, which used similarly flat, simplified areas of tone to convey landscape with economy and impact. The Landscape with Snow at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum dates to 1888 by some accounts, which would place it in the Arles period — where Van Gogh painted a snow-covered Arles in February 1888 shortly after his arrival, producing views of the city under an unusual southern snowfall with the same documentary seriousness he had brought to Dutch winter subjects.

The snow-covered ground is rendered in thin, cold whites with blue-grey shadows under trees and along walls. Bare tree forms provide stark dark verticals against the pale ground. The sky is kept in the same muted tonal register, merging sky and snow in a coherent grey-white scheme.