Search -
Impressionists in Winter: Effets de Neige
Impressionists in Winter Effets de Neige Author:Charles S. Moffett Impressionists in Winter: Effets de Neige presents the first thorough investigation of the subject of Impressionist winter landscape. The subject of winter -- clearly the most inhospitable season for plein-air painting -- provides some of the most exceptional and most spellbindingly beautiful paintings in Impressionism. — No exh... more »ibition and no publications in the literature on Impressionism have been devoted to this theme before.
Inspired by Alfred Sisley's Snow at Louveciennes in The Phillips Collection, this exhibition of sixty-three works presents an opportunity to consider the subject of snow in Impressionist painting in an unprecedented way. It comes as a surprise to most to learn that the Impressionists painted hundreds of paintings of snow or effets de neige, as they came to be called.
Of all the Impressionists, three artists especially were drawn to paint effets de neige: Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, and Camille Pissarro. Their shared fascination with these 'effets' led all three to repeatedly seek out opportunities to paint landscapes in snow. Yet each brought to the subject a highly individual response that we find reflected in the paintings assembled here. In addition to these three artists, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Gustave Caillebotte and Paul Gauguin also painted snowscapes, though far fewer. Renoir's characteristic interest in a social gathering of skaters in the Bois de Boulogne, Caillebotte's dramatic elevated views over Paris, and Gauguin's rare Brittany snowscapes add dimension and contrast to the dedicated pursuit of winter landscape just outside Paris of Monet, Sisley, and Pisarro. The result is a wider range of winter scenes from the bucolic French countryside to ice floes on the Seine, from the paths and roads of small villages to the boulevards and rooftops of Paris. Their common ground is an obsession with winter light.« less