Paesaggio innevato

There was heavy snow over Paris in the winter of 1874 into 1875, just months after the Impressionists had held their first group show, and Renoir went out into it to paint this small canvas. He did not enjoy the work. Years later he told the dealer Ambroise Vollard that he could never stand the cold, and that this was more or less his only winter landscape, with perhaps two or three little studies besides. What caught him was the light. Where the snow lies it is not really white at all, and Renoir uses it to test a favourite idea, laying in blues and warm tints so the drifts pick up the colours of everything around them.