Between Christmas and new year

LARSSON Carl (1853-1919)
1894

Pencil and watercolour

From the book Ett Hem (At home)

Larsson a Stockholm born Swedish painter and interior designer is a representative of the Arts and Crafts Movement. His many paintings include oils, watercolours, and frescoes. He considered his finest work to be his late Midvinterblot (Midwinter Sacrifice), a large painting now displayed inside the Swedish National Museum of Fine Arts.
In 1882 he met and married Karin Bergöö. They had eight children. In 1888 the young family was given a small house, named Little Hyttnäs, in Sundborn by Karin's father Adolf. Carl and Karin decorated and furnished this house according to their particular artistic taste and also for the needs of the growing family. Ett hem was published in 1899 and is full of these bright and very Scandinavian interiors. Above the door it says God's peace, a common Scandinavian term used at any time of the year as in closing a letter.

Coming South, Perth Station

EARL George (1824-1908)

1895

Oil on canvas

77.2 x 115.2 cms

National Railway Museum

This is the second of two pictures commissioned by Sir Andrew Barclay Walker of the Walker Brewery. The paintings are bustling narrative works depicting railway station life. Now owned by the National Railway Museum they were rescued in 1990 from a Liverpool pub (The Vines, Lime Street). Going North tells the story of a group of friends travelling from Kings Cross to Scotland for the summer grouse shooting season. The partner work seen here shows the group a month later at Perth Station, about to make their return journey. The works show much of the minutiae of Victorian station life and also include Earl's trademark sporting interests in the form of dogs and grouse. Earl was an early member of The Kennel Club. Although chiefly remembered as a canine artist due to his success depicting them, of the 19 paintings he exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1857 and 1882 only two were of dogs.

Going North, King's Cross Station

 

EARL, George (1824 – 1908)

1875, 1893

Oil on canvas

78 X 183 cms, 123 X 213 cms

Wigan Town Hall, National Railway Museum

 George Earl was an animal and sporting painter. He appears to have been a gentleman of some means as he had two residences, one at Newman Street, London, and the other at Banstead, Surrey. Many of Earl's sporting pictures featured Highland and shooting scenes, but he also painted horse portraits which displayed particularly soft coats and which were of the Victorian style of the day. Between 1856 and 1883, George Earl exhibited numerous paintings including Polo Match At Hurlingham at the Royal Academy. George Earl's daughter, Maud, inherited her father's artistic talents and went on to become a successful animal painter, as did his sons Percy and Thomas.

New England Farm by a Winter Road

DURRIE, George Henry (1820 – 1863)

1854
Oil on canvas, 45.7 X 61 cms
Private Collection

Connecticut born Durrie was apparently referred to as the snow man by fellow artists as he rather specialised in this sort of painting. A great deal of time and distance separates this painting from the previous one by Bruegel but the snow itself has a timeless and universal quality that leaves very little that is unique in its wake. What we do see here is a large and prosperous New England farmhouse apparently unhindered by the snows. This may be the owner safely returning home or a visitor come to share or to help in some way. Another figure is seen walking the dog a short distance before returning. In the barn are two cows well supplied with fodder. So despite the threatening clouds, despite the snow, despite the bare trees and the bare mountain, the message is a comforting one. Like the evcergreens here, we New Englanders know what Winter is about and we can weather it. We know how to sit tight until Spring comes again. No wonder such pictures in print form became so very popular in their time and beyond.

For the complete works of Durrie see here

Winter landscape with skaters and bird trap

BRUEGEL, Pieter the Elder (c. 1525 - 1569)

1565
Oil on panel
37 x 55,5 cm
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

The painting is sombre yet suffused with light. It shows a Brabant village scene. It is a holiday presumably and people are out, children especially, playing on the frozen river. On the far horizon, we can just make out a city enveloped in mist. The little picture apparently breaks with traditional panoramas. The contrasting winter colours make the picture almost monochrome, a technique that would be repeated in Dutch winter scenes for the next hundred years. The hilltop perspective of the painter is, apparently, traditional, giving the work a timelessness quality. The landscape is painted with great freedom, the paint apparently applied sometimes thickly and sometimes very thinly in order to give the impression of the snowy and frozen scene and the dark colours of the carefully positioned trees and vegetation. The experts are divided on whether Bruegel was assisted on this masterpiece. Scores of versions and numerous copies apparently exist, including at least one by Bruegel the younger, some of them as late as the 18th century.

The representations of winter scenes originated in the calendars of the Books of Hours. This is apparently the first European independent winter scene (ie not in  a series of seasonal landscapes). The winter of  1564-65 we know was particularly severe. There is probably a deeper meaning intended. This would be typical of art of the period. Perhaps we can think of a devout person as being a pilgrim travelling the river of life with its dangers and temptations. These have to be traversed to safely reach heaven. The bird trap in the right hand foreground (a door propped up by a stick with string attached) is symbolic of Satan's wiles, wiles that careless souls (a bird often standing for the soul) may be caught out by. Life is a slippery and uncertain journey.

For all Bruegel's works see here.