Tales of Winter – The Art of Snow and Ice

Tales of Winter - The Art of Snow and Ice

Tales of Winter – The Art of Snow and Ice: A look at how mankind’s struggle with winter has been reflected in western art throughout the ages, with contributions from Grayson Perry, Will Self, Don McCullin and others.


 

Art of Snow and Ice Part 1 
 



Art of Snow and Ice Part 2 
 

Winter was not always beautiful. Until Pieter Bruegel painted Hunters in the Snow, the long bitter months had never been transformed into a thing of beauty. This documentary charts how mankind’s ever changing struggle with winter has been reflected in western art throughout the ages, resulting in images that are now amongst the greatest paintings of all time. With contributions from Grayson Perry, Will Self, Don McCullin and many others, the film takes an eclectic group of people from all walks of life out into the cold to reflect on the paintings that have come to define the art of snow and ice.

 

Tales of Winter – The Art of Snow and Ice

 

Pieter Bruegel

Pieter Bruegel (also Brueghel or Breughel) the Elder ( c. 1525–1530 – 9 September 1569) was the most significant artist of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, a painter and print maker from Brabant, known for his landscapes and peasant scenes (so-called genre painting); he was a pioneer in making both types of subject the focus in large paintings.

He was a formative influence on Dutch Golden Age painting and later painting in general in his innovative choices of subject matter, as one of the first generation of artists to grow up when religious subjects had ceased to be the natural subject matter of painting. Pieter Bruegel also painted no portraits, the other mainstay of Netherlandish art.

After his training and travels to Italy, he returned in 1555 to settle in Antwerp, where he worked mainly as a prolific designer of prints for the leading publisher of the day. Only towards the end of the decade did he switch to make painting his main medium, and all his famous paintings come from the following period of little more than a decade before his early death, when he was probably in his early forties, and at the height of his powers.

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