Forest

Stanisław Witkiewicz was a Polish painter, art theoretician, and amateur architect who created the so-called "Zakopane style." Zakopane is a town in the mountains of Tatra in the south of Poland. The beautiful painting we present today was created two years after Stanisław Witkiewicz arrived in Zakopane to recover from his weakened health due to tuberculosis. It is exceptionally picturesque, capturing the captivating interplay of the winter moonlight and the shadows cast by the Tatra spruces. The painting shows a portion of the Tatra forest covered in soft snow, traversed by a narrow path where the shadows cast by the spruces and the radiance of the winter moon have formed an almost lace-like network fragmented by the traces of sled runners. Extraordinary light and shadow effects also appear on the several-centimeter-thick layer of snow covering the branches of the row of spruces along the path. The unusual brightness prevailing in this, after all, nighttime landscape, is surprising. If it weren't for the stars in the painting, one might think that this brightness comes from sunlight rather than moonlight.

Such an effect applied by Witkiewicz is entirely intentional—it aims to showcase the uniqueness of the depicted scene, a night illuminated like a day by the vast expanse of snow reflecting the moonlight is an exceedingly rare experience. The night sky, being granite-like rather than black, is also an uncommon phenomenon. Furthermore, thanks to the almost photographic realism of the scene, the viewer feels as if they are observing the snow-covered Tatra forest with their own eyes; they sense the cold in the woods, experience the silence of this winter landscape, and hear the sound of snow creaking beneath their boots as they walk along the snowy path.

We hope you have a tranquil and happy time today.  :)  Merry Christmas, everyone!  :)

P.S. Even if your winter is not (yet) full of snow, let's enjoy these peaceful, snowy winter paintings! And to get yourself in a Christmas mood, see the articles below!