Rabbit Warren at Pontoise, Snow

Along with Impressionist painters Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro pursued the theme of snow throughout his career, producing nearly 100 “snow” paintings. In 1879 France experienced an extraordinarily severe winter, which Pissarro explored in this and other works painted at his home in Pontoise, 30 miles west of Paris, along the Seine River. In Rabbit Warren, snow covers the ground, houses, and vegetation in a frothy coat that resulted from the artist’s vigorous brushwork. Throughout, small spots of color in the chimneys, greenish shrubs, and clothing of the man at right punctuate what is otherwise a predominately yellowish white and uninhabited fragment of nature. (Source: Art Institute of Chicago)