Sandvika, Norway
Claude Monet·1895
Historical Context
Sandvika, Norway was painted during Monet's February–March 1895 trip to Norway, where he visited his stepson Jacques Hoschedé who had settled there. The Norwegian winter landscape — heavy snow, pine forests, the distinctive blue-grey winter light of Scandinavia — gave Monet a radically different winter environment from his familiar French subjects. He worked in brutal cold conditions, painting the village of Sandvika under snow and the frozen Sandvika River, and produced around thirty canvases during this six-week campaign that are among the most formally experimental of his mid-career work.
Technical Analysis
The Norwegian winter light creates a blue-grey tonal field quite unlike the warm French winter light of the Grainstacks snow variants. Monet renders the snow with blue and violet shadows, the pine trees in dark cool greens, and the sky in pale greys and whites. The composition is often vertical, accommodating the tall pines that dominate the snowy landscape.
