Garden under Snow

In April 1880 the Impressionists opened their fifth group show in rooms at 10 rue des Pyramides in Paris. Paul Gauguin, still a newcomer whom Camille Pissarro and Edgar Degas had brought into the group, hung seven paintings and a marble bust. Number 57 in the catalogue was listed simply as Effet de neige, a snow effect, and this is that canvas, painted in 1879. The view runs across a garden to the houses beyond it, seen through a screen of thin bare trees, and only a few touches of red on the rooftops break the white and blue. Gauguin admired Paul Cézanne and owned pictures by him. The museum in Budapest notes that in his early landscapes he tried out Cézanne's parallel brushstrokes, and here the snow is laid on in dense, short, even touches.