Winter (from the cycle: The Four Seasons)

Painters have long used winter to show hardship, bare trees and snow and short days. Léger, at work on his 1928 seasons cycle, shows little of that. His Winter is put together from the same clear forms and bold colour as the other three, the season named rather than dramatised. The palette carries no real cold. It hangs in Basel beside Spring and Summer, the fourth part of a single year's work on an old theme.