Blue Winter

A beautifully atmospheric mid-century landscape, rendered with a wonderful sense of texture and restraint, executed in oil onto board.

The composition depicts an expansive snow-covered landscape beneath a vast blue-grey sky, with a low horizon and dark clusters of trees providing structure to the otherwise open scene.

The artist works in a distinctly modernist manner, reducing the landscape to broad passages of colour and allowing texture and gesture to carry much of the expression. The restrained palette is particularly appealing: cool slate and powder blues dominate the sky, contrasted against chalky whites, soft greys and muted olive greens across the snowy terrain. Small touches of turquoise add unexpected flashes of colour within the foreground.

Paint has been applied generously throughout, with wonderfully tactile, impasto brushwork and palette-knife marks creating a richly worked surface. Scraped, layered and overlapping strokes give the snow an almost abstract quality, while the heavily textured sky lends a sense of movement and changing weather. There is a lovely balance between the stillness of the subject and the energy of the paint handling.

This oil on board is presented in a complementary linen-lined wood frame. Both the painting and frame are in excellent vintage condition.