Pierre-Auguste Renoir – Snow-covered Landscape

Snow-covered Landscape – snow built from small blue and lilac touches

Snow-covered Landscape is an oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, made around 1875. The original measures 51.0 x 66.0 cm, is catalogued as RF 1960-21 and hangs in the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. Our oil painting on canvas Snow-covered Landscape is painted by hand in oil on canvas, in eight sizes from 80 x 60 to 170 x 130 cm.

Winter subjects are uncommon in Renoir’s work, which is part of what makes this one interesting. Snow is not a white surface for him but the place to show how much colour sits in shadow. There is very little white: the snow is built from blue, violet and rose, and white appears only where the light actually lands.

A screen of bare trees across the left half

The lower half of the canvas is filled by a snow-covered slope made of small flecks of blue, lilac, cream and white. At the left a screen of bare trees and thin trunks rises across the picture; through the branches and beyond them, at the upper right, pale houses with reddish roofs stand under a cold grey sky. A few dark accents mark the bushes breaking through the snow.

Why hand-painted, not a print

Our version is not a print. The snow is made of short, separated strokes that do not blend into one another, while the branches are drawn in a single pass over the ground already laid in. A hand-painted canvas keeps that difference in the way the paint sits, which printed paper cannot imitate.

In the room

The subject is cool and blue-grey and comes into its own in a light room, where the painting should settle a wall rather than take it over: a living room, a bedroom or a hallway. Because the snow is built from small separate touches and not from one white area, the scene breaks into colours from close to and reassembles at a distance, so it is worth leaving some space in front of it. For a smaller wall 90 x 70 cm is enough, above a larger piece of furniture we suggest 130 x 100 cm, and on a broad wall 170 x 130 cm works. Between them stand 110 x 85 and 150 x 120 cm. Under 80 x 60 cm the blue and lilac touches merge into an even white and the snow stops being a colour.

What you receive

We paint the canvas to order, by hand and for you alone, so every copy is made on its own; the canvas is usually painted and dried within three to four weeks. If you prefer, we will paint it in a size that is not on the list. Before despatch we send you a photograph of the finished canvas for your approval, and only then does the painting go out. Snow-covered Landscape arrives stretched on a wooden frame and ready to hang, wrapped in protective film and in rigid packaging, with no further stretching or finishing needed.

• Subject: snow-covered landscape with bare trees, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• Technique: hand-painted oil painting on canvas, stretched on a wooden frame
• Sizes: 8 sizes, from 80 x 60 cm to 170 x 130 cm, another size on request
• Detail worth knowing: the snow here is not white but built from blue, lilac, cream and white touches – the whiteness happens only in the eye

See also:

• The Farm at Les Collettes, Cagnes
• Promenade Undergrowth
• Luncheon of the Boating Party