Winter scene from Værløse

Three crows peck at the snow-packed road that runs through this Danish village at dusk. The yellow farmhouse on the left glows warmly against the cold, its windows lit from inside, while smoke would once have curled from the tall chimney on this kind of evening. Bare pollarded willows line the road, their stubby crowns a familiar sight in the Danish countryside. Peder Mørk Mønsted painted this scene at Værløse, a village northwest of Copenhagen, and signed it in 1915.

Mønsted was Denmark's master of realistic landscape painting, and he had a knack for snow in particular. Look at how the melting slush on the road turns pink and grey as the low sun catches it, while the untouched snow in the field stays cool and blue in shadow. He trained partly under the famous marine painter Peder Severin Krøyer, but where many of his contemporaries chased dramatic light and emotion, Mønsted stuck to careful, honest observation of ordinary Danish places. The result here is a plain winter afternoon captured with real skill, the sort of moment most people would walk past without a second thought.