A Sunny Winter's Day

Two towering trees anchor this wintry scene, their thick trunks freckled with clinging snow and their leafless branches fading into a soft, milky sky. Walter Moras, a German landscape painter who worked in Berlin around 1900, gives us a hushed morning where the snow lies undisturbed except for a few faint tracks running down the path. Way off in the distance, a lone figure makes his way along the trail, so small that he reminds us just how open and silent this stretch of countryside really is.

Painted in 1900, "A Sunny Winter's Day" shows off the gentle, realistic style Moras favored throughout his career. He spent much of his time capturing forests, rivers, and snow covered fields, and here his eye for small touches shines through in the pale blue shadows the low sun throws across the ground. Nothing much is going on, and that quiet ordinariness is exactly what he was after. The painting feels like the sort of peaceful moment you might come across on a cold walk, when the world seems to hold its breath for a while.