Tuileries Gardens, Effect of Snow

Painted from a window of the Hôtel Meurice in 1900, this view of the Tuileries Gardens under snow belongs to Pissarro's important series of winter Paris subjects. Snow interested Post-Impressionist painters for the way it neutralized local color and imposed a high-keyed, silver-white palette on familiar scenes. From his elevated position, Pissarro observed Parisians walking beneath bare plane trees against snow-covered parterres, the formal royal garden transformed into an almost abstract study of muted tone and branching tree calligraphy.

The snow covering is rendered in cool blue-white with lavender shadows, contrasted against the warm grey-brown of leafless tree trunks. The compressed perspective of the garden's formal layout seen from above creates a shallow, tapestry-like surface that reinforces the almost decorative flatness imposed by winter light on the historic landscape.