Snow-covered Forest

The painters working around The Hague in these years made their name on grey, on wet dunes and low cloud and cattle standing in a damp meadow. Apol went after the one season that turns all of that white, and he stayed with it for six decades, taking his subjects from the woods close to home in and around The Hague. Here the whole event is a small bridge over a frozen stream. There is no figure in it, no cart, no smoke from a chimney. The canvas belongs to the Dutch state art collection rather than to the museum, and it hangs with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.