Snow Place Like Home: Winter Landscapes in Prints & Editions

Hockney’s Snow (1973) from The Weather Series is a masterful distillation of winter’s quiet elegance and icy allure. The print captures the hushed tranquility of a snow-covered landscape, drawing viewers into its minimalist yet immersive world. Deeply influenced by the Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints of Hokusai and Hiroshige, Hockney’s composition channels the clean, deliberate lines and harmonious simplicity that define the tradition. The subtle horizontal tonal gradations evoke depth and stillness, creating a spatial recession that mirrors the expansiveness of a snow-blanketed scene.Hockney’s sensitivity to detail shines through in his ability to convey texture and atmosphere on a flat surface. The scene feels almost tactile, inviting viewers to experience the muffled silence and crisp snowfall. Echoing the Japanese aesthetic, Snow emphasises balance and economy of form, where each element serves a purpose in evoking a profound sense of place. Yet, the piece also reflects Hockney’s contemporary sensibility, marrying traditional techniques with modern printmaking innovations.

Through Snow, Hockney not only pays homage to the art historical traditions that inspired him, but also reimagines them within his own artistic language. The print becomes a meditation on the intersection of past and present, nature and artifice. As part of The Weather Series, Snow stands out for its ability to transform a fleeting moment into a timeless study of serenity, offering both a visual and emotional journey into the heart of winter.

Opie’s Winter 74 (2012) is part of his ambitious Winter series, a collection of 75 sequential prints that guide the viewer through a circular walk in the French countryside during a misty winter day. This series serves as a visual diary, capturing not just the physical scenery but the sensations and emotions tied to the passage of time in a winter landscape. Each print, while seemingly static, conveys the subtle dynamism of movement, as if one were walking alongside Opie, observing the quiet transformation of the season.

The prints employ a restrained colour palette dominated by earthy tones of green, brown, and gray, punctuated occasionally by the crisp white of snow or the hazy light of a winter sky. This limited palette enhances the series’ cohesion and underscores the subdued, atmospheric quality of winter. Simplified shapes and block colours typify Opie’s late graphic style, where landscapes are distilled to their most essential elements. Yet, despite this minimalism, when viewed collectively, the series transforms into an animated ode to winter. Opie’s approach merges the digital and the tactile, emphasising modularity and the repetitive beauty of nature. His technique of laminating the prints to glass further accentuates their modernity, bridging traditional landscape art with contemporary visual methods.

Beyond its aesthetic appeal, Winter 74 exemplifies Opie’s broader exploration of movement, time, and the interaction between the individual and the natural world. By reinterpreting the classic genre of landscape painting through a modern lens, Opie invites viewers to reconsider their connection to both art and environment. The result is a series that is not only visually compelling but deeply reflective, offering a fresh perspective on the timeless allure of winter landscapes.

L. S. Lowry’s Winter in Broughton (1969) and Going to the Match (1972) are quintessential examples of the artist’s ability to infuse everyday scenes with a distinct sense of place and season, rendered in his signature stylised realism. In Winter in Broughton, Lowry portrays a lively, snow-blanketed neighborhood with terraced houses standing rigid against the cold. Bare, skeletal trees punctuate the composition, their stark forms accentuating the wintry atmosphere. The bundled-up figures scattered throughout the scene bring life and movement, evoking the rhythms of daily life, even in the biting cold. Notably, Lowry omits traditional elements such as shadows or detailed weather effects, lending the scene a surreal, almost dream-like quality. This stylistic choice emphasises the essence of memory and imagination in his work. Rather than providing a photographic realism, Lowry’s depiction invites viewers to engage with the emotional and communal aspects of the scene, encouraging nostalgic reflections of their own experiences with winter.

Similarly, in Going to the Match, Lowry captures the communal spirit of winter through a procession of figures making their way to a football match. The snow-covered streets and the somber grey sky form a stark yet invigorating backdrop against which the figures trek with determination and purpose. Despite the cold conditions, there is a palpable sense of camaraderie among the people, reflecting winter’s ability to bring communities together in shared activities and traditions. These works exemplify Lowry’s unparalleled skill in portraying the resilience of the human spirit against the challenges of the season. Through the familiar motifs of terraced houses, muted skies, and bustling figures, Winter in Broughton and Going to the Match celebrate the beauty and fortitude found in everyday life during winter.

Doig’s Zermatt D1 (2022) series is an exploration of the Alpine landscape, blending the artist’s distinctive painterly techniques with a contemporary approach to printmaking. These works capture the sweeping grandeur of the snow-covered mountains surrounding Zermatt, Switzerland, while focusing on the figures of skiers navigating the vast, icy expanse. The contrast between the vibrant skiers and the muted tones of the landscape creates a dynamic interplay that draws the viewer’s eye and reinforces the balance between human presence and the overwhelming power of nature.

Each print in the series tells its own story. In some, the skiers appear isolated against the vast, untouched snowfields, emphasising their smallness in the face of nature’s enormity. In others, the figures’ dynamic poses suggest moments of triumph, struggle, or contemplation, inviting viewers to imagine the emotions tied to the depicted scenes. The layering of light and shadow adds depth to the compositions, enhancing the illusion of movement and the sense of fleeting moments captured in time. Doig’s choice to employ giclée printing, a technique that uses advanced inkjet printers to produce high-quality prints from a digital image of the original artwork, allows the Zermatt D1 series to achieve a remarkable level of detail. This technique, celebrated for its precision and ability to replicate subtle tonal variations, complements Doig’s artistic vision, enabling him to render the texture of snow, the shifting patterns of light, and the fluidity of the skiers’ movements with exceptional clarity.

Helen Frankenthaler’s Snow Pines (2004) exemplifies her devotion to Abstract Expressionism, translating the serene, fleeting beauty of a snowy forest into a vision of colour and form. This work is less a literal representation and more an evocative meditation on winter’s atmosphere, capturing its stillness, fragility, and quiet power. Frankenthaler’s signature soak-stain technique, pouring and staining pigments onto canvas, allows her to create fluid, overlapping layers that seem to melt into one another, mirroring the interplay of light, shadow, and snow in a natural landscape.

Frankenthaler’s abstraction captures the essence of winter’s ephemerality. The fluidity of her technique mimics the way snow shifts and changes under varying conditions, while the translucent layers convey the sense of something both fragile and enduring. The composition’s lack of clear boundaries or definitive forms echoes the expansive quiet of a snow-covered forest, offering a sense of both tranquility and boundless possibility.