When Vincent van Gogh arrived in Arles in February 1888, he was greeted by an unexpected snowfall that transformed the Provençal landscape. Within days, he set out to capture this rare southern snow, writing to his brother Theo: "I have a landscape with snow and a small house and a violet sky." Landscape with Snow is one of only a handful of snow scenes Van Gogh painted during his career, and it marks the very beginning of his prolific Arles period—a time that would produce some of his most celebrated works. In this painting, Van Gogh fixes his gaze on a quiet country road winding through fields blanketed in white, the snow broken only by the ochre of the earth and the dark silhouettes of a pair of distant figures. The sky is rendered in cool, pale tones, while the land is mapped with vigorous, swirling brushstrokes that seem to pulse with energy.

The composition draws the viewer’s eye along the path, past the figures trudging through the cold, toward the horizon where the land meets the sky. Unlike the muted, delicate snowscapes of Claude Monet, Van Gogh’s approach is bold and direct, using color and movement to convey the bracing chill and the sense of isolation in the winter countryside. Landscape with Snow has remained in the public eye as a testament to Van Gogh’s restless experimentation during his first weeks in Arles. The painting was never formally commissioned and, like many of Van Gogh’s works, it was sent to Theo in Paris.

Its medium is oil on canvas, a favorite of the artist, though the precise materials have sometimes been debated. Today, the painting is part of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s collection in New York, where it stands as an early signal of the intense creativity that would soon define Van Gogh’s time in the south of France.