The Art of Advent: Day Six

By Madina Burkhanova

Welcome to day six of HASTA’s The Art of Advent 2023! The weather in St Andrews is certainly taking winter very seriously; my neighbourhood on East Sands resembles what I imagined the North Pole looked like as a child. On this day, I’d like to highlight one of my favourite wintery paintings, Snow at Louveciennes, painted in 1874 by Alfred Sisley. 

Alfred Sisley, Snow at Louveciennes, oil on canvas, 1874. Photo courtesy of The Phillips Collection.

There’s nothing I love more than a rustic, quaint town scene. I only got around to watching the Christmas-themed romantic comedy The Holiday last year, but I immediately fell in love with the beautiful townhouse setting in the English countryside. It also makes sense that my favourite place in the UK is the Lake District, where picturesque rural towns are plentiful. 

Snow at Louveciennes is a serene depiction of a woman in the idyllic French town with snow falling gently around her. Trees surround her and she walks along a path paralleling a wall, but there is no fear induced from the size of these elements. In fact, they add to the tranquillity of the painting.

There is an aura of quietude within the softened contours of the piece; art collector Duncan Phillips described it as a “lyric of winter, enchanting both in its mood and in its tonality of tenderly transcribed ‘values’”. Impressionism and snow are a perfect pairing because the falling of snow allows for the softening of excess darkness and the omittance of harsh lines. Snow at Louveciennes is a prime impressionist depiction of wintertime, but in its own way it exudes warmth.