Painting Snow
Dreaming of Peace and Beauty
With winter comes snow in almost every part of Canada. Snow is the icy stars that crystalize in the air, the gentle flakes that fall silently from the sky, the sparkle that lights the long nights of winter, and the white coat that cloaks autumn’s debris and refreshes the ground before the next spring.
A Canadian artist who captured the wonder and beauty of snow was David Milne (1882-1953). Snow appears in many of Milne’s paintings. He was a close observer of nature and did not shy away from representing Canada’s natural bounty in all of its seasons.
Snow, he seemed to know, does not discriminate. It falls where it will, on wars and ruin, as much on the bucolic ponds and streams of Canada. Milne captured it all.
In 1917, as Canadians joined the war to defend its European allies, Milne enlisted and served as a war artist. Here again, snow appears as it coats a devastated landscape wrought not by nature but by human destruction.
Milne lived to see yet another war. In 1941, at home in Canada, he turned to fantastical dreams of a more peaceful and beautiful world and imagined snow falling gently on Bethlehem.
May our world yet know such a peace!
I am taking a few weeks to enjoy the holiday season and will return in January. My best wishes to all my readers and fellow writers on Substack. Thanks for following my wanderings through the making and meaning of contemporary art.
Beautiful piece. Milne, and Tom Thomson, are still up there with the best. Doig is good, but those guys had more soul to their paintings.
Merry Christmas Marie 🎄 Thank you for sharing your thoughts and insights throughout the year.