Schmelzender Schnee in Fontainebleau

December 1879 was the coldest month Paris has ever recorded. The monthly average sat near minus seven degrees, the thermometer reached almost minus 24 on the 10th, and the ice on the Seine grew past 30 centimetres. Cezanne spent that winter at Melun, a short ride from the forest of Fontainebleau, where French painters had been going after oaks and light for 50 years. Snow is rare in his work. He was a southerner who painted best in dry hard weather, and the moment he took from that winter was the thaw, the point where the cold starts letting go. He stayed at Melun about a year, moved back to Paris in the spring of 1880, and did not paint in that forest again until the 1890s. The canvas is dated 1879 to 1880 in New York, where the Museum of Modern Art has it.