Some paintings capture a season so well that you can almost feel the cold on your cheeks. Here are five that look exactly like winter: perfect to sit with on a grey afternoon, with something warm in your hands.
1. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Hunters in the Snow (1565, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)
Three hunters and their dogs trudge home through the snow, tired, with little to show for the day. Below them, a valley opens up: frozen ponds full of tiny skaters, villages, jagged mountains, a pale green sky. Look at the crows in the bare trees, the fire outside the inn, the woman crossing a bridge. A whole winter world in one painting.
2. Hendrick Avercamp, Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters (around 1608, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)
A frozen waterway in the Netherlands, crowded with people: skaters, couples, children, someone who has just fallen over. Avercamp loved painting the joyful chaos of the ice. Spend a few minutes finding all the little stories.
3. Utagawa Hiroshige, Evening Snow at Kanbara (1833–34, from The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō)
A Japanese woodblock print: a small village at night, roofs and mountains heavy with snow, a few figures bent under umbrellas or bundles. It's perhaps the quietest print in the series. You can almost hear the snow muffling every sound.
4. Paul Gauguin, Breton Village in the Snow (around 1894, Musée d'Orsay, Paris)
A church spire, a few rooftops, bare trees, and snow under a low sky. Quiet, slightly melancholy, very still.
5. Gustave Caillebotte, Rooftops in the Snow (1878, Musée d'Orsay, Paris)
Paris from a high window: grey zinc roofs, chimneys and white snow under a heavy sky. Winter as a city-dweller sees it, looking out from a warm room.
How to sit with a winter painting
Make a hot drink. Choose one painting. Look for the coldest place in it, then the warmest: a fire, a lit window, a red coat. Breathe slowly while your eyes move from one to the other. Winter is easier to love when you know where the warmth is.
Winter, in two worlds
The Both Worlds subscription brings this kind of slow looking to you on paper and on screen: a letter and a postcard every month, the seasonal print issue of "(meditating) On Art", and the Digital subscription's recommendations, videos and practices. Something warm for the cold months.
Remember to take as much time as you need, and meet me at the next one.
Love, Evi