Viez of Bazincourt, Effect of Snow, Evening

Pissarro's snow and winter paintings from his years in Bazincourt and Éragny are among his most carefully observed, the restricted palette of winter forcing a precision of tonal observation that his more colouristically abundant summer work sometimes dissolved into impression. Views of Bazincourt in snow, with effects of evening light, demand an especially exacting colour analysis: the warm pink-orange of snow in fading daylight against the cold blue-grey of shadow, the silhouetted winter trees against the luminous horizon. These evening snow scenes are among the least known but most technically refined of his late Éragny works.

The evening light is captured in the warm orange-pink glow on the snow surface, set against the deep cool blue-grey of shadow and the pale yellow-pink of the western sky. Pissarro renders the snow with directional horizontal strokes that register both its surface texture and its capacity to reflect the sky above. The dark silhouettes of winter trees provide vertical punctuation in the luminous horizontal field.