Landscape with Snow
A snow-covered field outside Arles, a man and dog crossing it — one of the first things Van Gogh painted after arriving in Provence.
Montmajour Abbey
The painting depicts a real landscape or cityscape. The precise viewpoint the artist used may be unknown, so the marker shows the general area.
Landscape with Snow — at a glance
- Artist
- Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890)
- Year
- 1888
- Movement
- Post-Impressionism
- Place
- The farmland outside Arles, Provence, France
- Viewpoint
- The plain towards Montmajour under a rare snowfall — farmland survives; not a marked spot
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- c. 38 × 46 cm
- Now at
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Overview
Landscape with Snow is one of the very first canvases Vincent van Gogh painted at Arles, in February 1888, when an unusual snowfall covered Provence just after his arrival from Paris. It shows a broad, thinly snow-covered field with a low fence, a man in dark clothes walking a dog along a path, farm buildings and trees in the middle distance, and a strip of pink-tinged sky. It is oil on canvas, about 38 by 46 cm, and it hangs in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Where was Landscape with Snow painted?
Scholarship Van Gogh had just settled in Arles, a town in the Rhône delta of Provence, and worked in the open fields on its edge, looking towards the low limestone ridge of Montmajour with its ruined abbey. The plain around Arles is still agricultural and Montmajour still stands, but the picture records a stretch of that farmland under a rare snowfall rather than a marked, identifiable viewpoint.
What is in the painting?
The near field is brown earth showing through patchy snow, crossed by a track. A man in a hat and dark coat walks away from the viewer with a small dog. A low fence or hedge runs across the middle; beyond it, a cluster of farm buildings with red roofs, bare trees, and the pale ridge of hills. The sky is a band of cool white and pink.
Look closely
The man and dog
A dark-coated figure walks away down the track with a small dog — the only movement.
The red roofs
A cluster of farm buildings with warm red roofs punctuates the muted field.
The earth through the snow
Brown ground shows through a thin, patchy cover of snow.
The pink sky
A cold flush of pink and white above the hills — a wintry Provençal light.
Analysis
Composition and technique
A plain, low-horizon field with the walking figure and the farm buildings as the only accents.
Scholarship Van Gogh keeps the horizon low and the design simple — foreground field, band of buildings and trees, strip of sky — and lets the dark figure and the red roofs punctuate the muted white and brown. The paint is applied in short, blunt strokes following the lie of the ground.
Colour and light
Muted browns and dirty white in the field, warm red roofs, and a cold pink-and-white sky.
The palette is subdued for Van Gogh — earth showing through thin snow, grey-brown trees — with the red roofs and the flush of pink in the sky the only warm notes. It is a wintry, transitional light, quite unlike the Arles pictures of the following summer.
History & provenance
The painting passed through European and American collections and is in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (Thannhauser Collection).
Sources
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (Thannhauser Collection) — collection entry for Vincent van Gogh, ‘Landscape with Snow’ (1888)
- ‘Vincent van Gogh: The Letters’ (Van Gogh Museum) — Arles, February 1888
Related paintings
The Magpie
1868
Monet's snowfield near Étretat of 1868–69 — the same rare-snow subject, twenty years earlier.
Les Alyscamps
1888
Van Gogh's Arles avenue from the following autumn — the same town, in full colour.
The Yellow House
1888
Van Gogh's house on the Place Lamartine — his base for this and the Arles pictures.
More by Vincent van Gogh
Café Terrace at Night
The Church at Auvers
Starry Night Over the Rhone
