New Snow

New Snow from 1900 depicts the Norwegian coastal landscape near Åsgårdstrand after a fresh snowfall, the specific condition of new snow — before human activity has disturbed it, when everything is uniformly white and the world appears remade — that carried obvious symbolic associations of renewal, purity, and the erasure of the familiar. Munch painted several winter and snow subjects at Åsgårdstrand, extending his engagement with the Norwegian coastal world across the full cycle of seasons. The Munch Museum holds this as part of its collection of his Norwegian landscape subjects from the turn of the century.

Munch exploits the new snow's near-monochromatic quality — the landscape reduced to white, pale grey, and the dark accents of tree trunks and fence lines — to create a composition of unusual tonal restraint. The snow's surface is rendered with varied touches of white, cream, and pale shadow tone.