Capturing the Beauty and Terror of Winter

How the winter months inspired artists across regions and time periods, from Pieter Bruegel the Elder to Utagawa Hiroshige.

Hunters in the Snow, Pieter Bruegel the Elder ca. 1565. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Hunters in the Snow (1565) hangs against a dark wall in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The moody backdrop makes the starkness of the wintry scene ever-more prominent, luring visitors into Bruegel’s imaginative take on a winter’s day.

I say “imaginative” because the landscape depicted in the scene is an amalgamation of Bruegel’s travels through the Alps and his life in Antwerp and Brussels. The scene is apparently set in the Low Countries, but in the distance, Bruegel has included a distinctly-alpine mountain range that certainly wouldn’t exist in the Netherlands or Belgium.

I saw the painting for the first time in August of 2017 while studying abroad in Austria. My program included free entry to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, and I made great use of my pass over the months that followed. Hunters in the Snow drew me like a moth to a flame—I was captivated by how effectively Br…