For the next 150 years, northern European winters were comparatively snowy and harsh. The winter of 1564–1565 was said to be the longest and most severe for more than a hundred years – the beginning of a cold period in northern Europe now called the Little Ice Age. Snow was not depicted in art except where it had a context, such as in the winter months of calendars.ĭuring the Early Northern Renaissance and even more during the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century, interest in landscape painting was increasing. Īt that time, landscapes had not yet developed as a genre in art, which explains the scarcity of winter scenes in medieval painting. Some snowy scenes also appear in a set of early 14th-century frescoes created by Master Wenceslas for the Bishop's Palace at Trento, showing people throwing snowballs at each other, and in a detail of Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Effects of Good Government in the City and Countryside (1337–39). January and February were typically shown as snowy, as is February in the famous cycle of the Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, illustrated 1412–1416.

These were often illuminated manuscripts such as Labours of the Months, a cycle of twelve paintings that illustrated the social life, the agricultural tasks, the weather, and the landscape for each month of the year. Since the early 15th century, wintry scenes had been represented by artists in parts of large sculptural works on churches and even on a smaller scale in private devotional scripts such as the book of hours, a devotional collection of texts, prayers and psalms. Because frequent snowfall is a part of winter in northern European countries, depiction of snow in Europe began first in the northern European countries. The first artistic representations of snow came in the 15th and 16th centuries. History Between Renaissance and the eve of Romanticism February, attributed to Paul Limbourg, or the 'Rustic painter', 14, Musée Condé.Įarly European painters generally did not depict snow since most of their paintings were of religious subjects. Most of these winter landscapes in art history are plein-air depictions of winter scenes, using the quality of gray winter light to create the special winter atmosphere.ĭepiction of snow in Europe is essentially a northern European theme. Paintings that feature snow as a theme are mostly landscapes, even if some of these works involve religious or even fantasy landscapes. The first depictions of snow began to occur in the 15th and 16th centuries. Painters avoided landscapes in general for the same reason. Wintry and snowy landscapes are not seen in early European painting since most of the subjects were religious. The depiction of winter landscapes in Western art begins in the 15th century. Navigating a wetland bramble on the banks of Homestake Creek in Eagle County, Colorado, James Dilzell, director of the nonprofit Eagle River Watershed Council, mused on the regional importance of snow in the Rockies.Józef Chełmoński: Partridges in the snow, 1891 Richard von Drasche-Wartinberg: In Deep Winter Last year’s wet winter may have created more space for long-term negotiations about sharing the Colorado River, but if the region sees low snow totals in the coming months, policy analysts say things could quickly turn in the wrong direction and reintroduce some urgency to water management talks. This winter’s forecast is unclear, but however it unfolds will have an outsized impact on the next few years of region-wide water management. The river – which supplies water to tens of millions of people from Wyoming to Mexico – gets most of its water from high-altitude snow, two-thirds of which falls in Colorado. Soon, the flakes will begin to pile up, burying alpine valleys and recharging the Colorado River. The summer leaves have given way to bare branches, but the ski slopes haven’t yet filled with tourists-or snow. High in the mountains of Colorado, it’s a time of quiet. By Alex Hager at KUNC ( Via AP Storyshare)

Winter mountain scene