Winter in visual art, print version


Winter in visual art Cold has been associated with the North since Aristotle. In medieval times, winter and the cold climate were seen as shaping people's behavior and making the people in the North hostile and animal-like in their ways. In his Divine Comedy , Dante Alighieri describes Hell as a passage descending ever further into the depths of the Earth. The more heinous one's sin, the deeper in the Earth one languished. One of the worst punishments was to end up in eternal cold, amid ice and frost. Olaus Magnus's Pohjoisten Kansojen Historia [A Description of the Northern Peoples], published in 1555, became a principal and extensively distributed source of information in Europe . Magnus probably came as far north as Pello and while he described his own experiences, he also extensively cited the work of ancient and medieval writers. Thus, for Magnus, too, the North was a place of cold, the God of War and spirits. Early literature considered the principal elements of winter – cold, ice and snow – to be negative. The explorers, tourists and adventurers of the 1600s and 1700s described winter as an extreme experience; the only thing worth drinking was hard spirits, since everything else froze. The first pictures of winter showed the frozen sea of the Åland Islands and Northern Lights flaring in the middle of a snowy forest. These were the work of A.F. Skjöldebrand, a Swedish poet and officer who published a description of a journey he took in 1799 from Stockholm through Turku , Oulu and Tornio to North Cape in Norway . Traveling with him was Giuseppe Acerbi, an Italian, who borrowed his companion's accounts without permission and used them in his own description of the trip. The Englishman Sir Arthur de Capell Brooke traveled to the North in the 1820s precisely because of the winter. In his illustrated work he depicted horse-drawn transportation on the ice of the river and travel by reindeer in unbroken snow, snowstorms, ice, cold, and darkness. Early Finnish illustrated works avoided portrayals of winter. Matkustus Suomessa [Travel in Finland ], which did not appear until 1873, included three pictures of winter, but painting at that time had already begun to depict the beauty of the season. Magnus and Ferdinand von Wright were the pioneers of the Finnish depiction of winter at the end of the 1840s and beginning of the 1850s. Their paintings show the influence of the romantic relation to nature and a meticulously detailed style. Unfortunately, the development in portrayals of winter was interrupted when Finnish artists went off to study at Düsseldorf in the 1850s. The artists spent their summers in Finland doing landscape sketches for the following semester. Moreover, they adopted the central European landscape ideal. Depictions of winter did appear in the 1860s and 1870s, but often with the summer as a background influence. Indeed, Hjalmar Munsterhelm's winter is nothing but a snow-frosted summer. Outdoor painting, Realism and the aesthetics of Hippolyte Taine changed artists' relation to what they were portraying. Outdoor painting prompted artists to go to their subjects and, in keeping with Realism, that subject had to be depicted as faithfully as possible. According to Taine, art was the product of a certain environment and race, and for this reason artists were to begin seeking the distinctive features of their country and people. Inspired by this, Victor Westerholm, Axel Gallén and Elin Danielson began to apply the principles of outdoor painting to the Finnish winter landscape in the 1870s. Through the 1880s and 1890s, winter and snow became part of the Finnish identity and features of the fatherland - national characteristics. Winter was a source of national pride and a testimony to survival under difficult conditions. It was accepted for inclusion in the book Suomi 19:llä vuosisadalla [ Finland in the 19th century], which appeared in 1893. The book had a large number of winter pictures, including icebreakers, seal hunters and happy city children skating. The beauty of winter was also brought out through the winter landscapes of Axel Gallén and Eero Järnefelt. The snowy landscapes attracted new interpreters, such as Pekka Halonen, Juho Rissanen, Väinö Hämäläinen, Väinö Blomstedt, Gabriel Engberg and Juho Kustaa Kyyhkynen. The portrayal of winter continued in the 1900s, with different styles such as Symbolism, Synthetism, Impressionism and Expressionism each adding its own form of expression and mood to the paintings. Later, nature in winter was the inspiration even for non-representational art. Since the 1980s, snow and ice have increasingly been used as materials for earth and environmental art. Tuija Hautala-Hirvioja
© University of Lapland and Kemi-Tornio Polytechnic, Culture Unit

Winter in visual art

Cold has been associated with the North since Aristotle. In medieval times, winter and the cold climate were seen as shaping people's behavior and making the people in the North hostile and animal-like in their ways. In his Divine Comedy , Dante Alighieri describes Hell as a passage descending ever further into the depths of the Earth. The more heinous one's sin, the deeper in the Earth one languished. One of the worst punishments was to end up in eternal cold, amid ice and frost.

Olaus Magnus's Pohjoisten Kansojen Historia [A Description of the Northern Peoples], published in 1555, became a principal and extensively distributed source of information in Europe . Magnus probably came as far north as Pello and while he described his own experiences, he also extensively cited the work of ancient and medieval writers. Thus, for Magnus, too, the North was a place of cold, the God of War and spirits. Early literature considered the principal elements of winter – cold, ice and snow – to be negative. The explorers, tourists and adventurers of the 1600s and 1700s described winter as an extreme experience; the only thing worth drinking was hard spirits, since everything else froze.

The first pictures of winter showed the frozen sea of the Åland Islands and Northern Lights flaring in the middle of a snowy forest. These were the work of A.F. Skjöldebrand, a Swedish poet and officer who published a description of a journey he took in 1799 from Stockholm through Turku , Oulu and Tornio to North Cape in Norway . Traveling with him was Giuseppe Acerbi, an Italian, who borrowed his companion's accounts without permission and used them in his own description of the trip. The Englishman Sir Arthur de Capell Brooke traveled to the North in the 1820s precisely because of the winter. In his illustrated work he depicted horse-drawn transportation on the ice of the river and travel by reindeer in unbroken snow, snowstorms, ice, cold, and darkness. Early Finnish illustrated works avoided portrayals of winter. Matkustus Suomessa [Travel in Finland ], which did not appear until 1873, included three pictures of winter, but painting at that time had already begun to depict the beauty of the season.

Magnus and Ferdinand von Wright were the pioneers of the Finnish depiction of winter at the end of the 1840s and beginning of the 1850s. Their paintings show the influence of the romantic relation to nature and a meticulously detailed style. Unfortunately, the development in portrayals of winter was interrupted when Finnish artists went off to study at Düsseldorf in the 1850s. The artists spent their summers in Finland doing landscape sketches for the following semester. Moreover, they adopted the central European landscape ideal. Depictions of winter did appear in the 1860s and 1870s, but often with the summer as a background influence. Indeed, Hjalmar Munsterhelm's winter is nothing but a snow-frosted summer.

Outdoor painting, Realism and the aesthetics of Hippolyte Taine changed artists' relation to what they were portraying. Outdoor painting prompted artists to go to their subjects and, in keeping with Realism, that subject had to be depicted as faithfully as possible. According to Taine, art was the product of a certain environment and race, and for this reason artists were to begin seeking the distinctive features of their country and people. Inspired by this, Victor Westerholm, Axel Gallén and Elin Danielson began to apply the principles of outdoor painting to the Finnish winter landscape in the 1870s.

Through the 1880s and 1890s, winter and snow became part of the Finnish identity and features of the fatherland - national characteristics. Winter was a source of national pride and a testimony to survival under difficult conditions. It was accepted for inclusion in the book Suomi 19:llä vuosisadalla [ Finland in the 19th century], which appeared in 1893. The book had a large number of winter pictures, including icebreakers, seal hunters and happy city children skating. The beauty of winter was also brought out through the winter landscapes of Axel Gallén and Eero Järnefelt. The snowy landscapes attracted new interpreters, such as Pekka Halonen, Juho Rissanen, Väinö Hämäläinen, Väinö Blomstedt, Gabriel Engberg and Juho Kustaa Kyyhkynen.

The portrayal of winter continued in the 1900s, with different styles such as Symbolism, Synthetism, Impressionism and Expressionism each adding its own form of expression and mood to the paintings. Later, nature in winter was the inspiration even for non-representational art. Since the 1980s, snow and ice have increasingly been used as materials for earth and environmental art.