Landscape with Snow is believed to be one of the first paintings that van Gogh made in Arles. It is one of at least ten oil and watercolor paintings that the artist made of a snowy landscape from 1882 to 1889. In a letter to his brother Theo about February 24, 1888, Van Gogh describes having completed three paintings in as many days, one of them "a landscape in the snow".
Van Gogh was a great admirer and an avid collector of Japanese art woodcut prints. He came to Arles hoping to establish an artistic community in an environment commensurate with his Oriental ideal. The scene may have been inspired by the prints with snowy scenes, but it also follows conventions of seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painting in its gradation of color of the sky.
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Landscape With Snow
oil on canvas • 38 x 46 cm
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Vincent van Gogh