In the winter of 1885, Paul Gauguin found himself stranded in Copenhagen, far from the Parisian art circles he longed for. His Danish wife, Mette Gad, had brought him to her native city in hopes of a steadier life, but the move proved disastrous: Gauguin struggled with the language, failed to sell his paintings, and grew increasingly isolated. It was during this bleak period that he painted Winter's End, Copenhagen, a rare glimpse into his short, difficult Scandinavian sojourn—a chapter so unhappy that Gauguin would later write, "I was dying in the cold north, far from all that I loved." The painting captures a Copenhagen street at the tail end of winter, where patches of dirty snow linger on the ground and the sky hangs heavy with the promise of thaw.

Gauguin chooses a moment of transition: a solitary figure, bundled against the cold, hurries past bare trees and shuttered windows, while a faint, uncertain light breaks through the clouds. The palette is muted—greys, ochres, and the dull blue of melting ice—yet there is a quiet tension in the composition, as if the city itself is holding its breath for spring. Unlike the bright, tropical scenes Gauguin would later become famous for, this work shares more with the urban realism of Christen Købke or the early Paris scenes of Camille Pissarro, focusing on the ordinary and the everyday. The precise fate of Winter's End, Copenhagen is not fully documented, and its medium remains uncertain—oil, pastel, or watercolor have all been suggested by various catalogues.

It is known that Gauguin exhibited little during his time in Denmark, and many works from this period remained with his wife's family or were dispersed in later years. Today, the painting stands as a rare witness to Gauguin's northern exile, a period that shaped his resolve to seek new worlds and new colors. It marks a turning point: soon after, Gauguin would leave Copenhagen—and his family—behind, returning to Paris and setting out on the restless path that would define his career.