Via di paese in inverno

That steep wall of rock closing off the far end of the street is the Jura, the mountain country around Ornans where Courbet grew up and kept returning to paint. He made a run of snow scenes in these years, and they sold well; a winter village or a deer in deep snow was the kind of picture collectors wanted from him. Look at how thickly the paint sits on the drifts. He loaded it on with a palette knife so the snow has real weight and cold to it, the whites and greys built up until the surface itself seems frozen. The houses along the road stand shuttered and empty, the way a mountain hamlet does in the dead of the season.