Winter Light

An expressive mid-century landscape that captures the stillness of a winter marsh, where a broad expanse of pale water or frost-covered ground stretches across the foreground, reflecting the muted sky above, executed in oil onto canvas.

Slender, leafless trees rise along the water’s edge, their dark trunks and branches creating elegant vertical accents against the open, horizontal sweep of the landscape. In the distance, softened forms of woodland and low terrain recede into shadow, lending the scene a quiet sense of depth and solitude.

The painting is rendered in a confident, painterly style characteristic of mid-century modernist landscapes. The artist has used loose, gestural brushwork to suggest rather than define, allowing texture and movement to convey atmosphere. The surface reveals thickly applied passages of paint in the foreground, where creamy whites, pale greys, and soft blues evoke frost, water, or snow. These cooler tones are subtly enlivened by touches of ochre, rust, and mossy green, suggesting winter grasses and reeds catching the last warmth of the season.

The sky is painted in layered shades of muted blue and grey, applied in broad, sweeping strokes that create a soft, overcast luminosity. The trees are articulated with darker, more deliberate lines, their vertical rhythm grounding the composition and framing the open space beyond. Overall, the painting balances abstraction and representation, capturing not just the physical landscape, but its mood: serene, introspective, and quietly poetic.

This oil on canvas is housed in a very well-suited linen lined wood frame that complements atmospheric palette beautifully. The painting itself is in very good vintage condition. There are minor scuffs to the inner frame, and a small area of loss to the bottom right corner of the outer frame, consistent with age, but this does not detract from the overall appearance.

Size: 61 x 78 cm (including frame)