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Painted in the final weeks of 1896, Winter Scene records a Quebec landscape: snow covered trees and bushes fill the foreground, simultaneously framing and partially concealing a farm; forested hills of the Laurentians are visible in the distance. The formal complexity of the work rests on Maurice Cullen’s treatment of the snow and ice that coats the trees, blankets the ground, and covers the roofs of the buildings. He used an enormous array of pale purplish-blue shades to bring definition to the massive expanses of snowy whiteness, and the reflections of these tones in the sky creates the impression of an overcast day where the viewer is enveloped in the cold. 

Cullen completed Winter Scene at a pivotal moment in his career. After over seven years of study in France, he had returned to Canada in 1895. Following a brief visit to Paris early in 1896, he decided to go to Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, where he spent eight months working on new paintings. He later explained to Robert Pilot (1898–1967), his stepson, that he had felt drawn to this area: “coming up the River on his return from France he saw the smiling fields and houses nestling under the hills, looking so thoroughly charming in the Laurentian haze, that he asked the captain the name of the place and decided that that was where he would go to paint.” [1] Cullen also had friends painting at Beaupré—Montreal artists William Brymner (1855–1925) and Edmond Dyonnet (1859–1954) were with him in the summer of 1896. [2]

While Cullen visited Beaupré many times and worked there in all seasons, his early winter landscapes are particularly notable. In addition to Winter Scene, he created Logging in Winter, Beaupré, 1896 (Art Gallery of Hamilton), one of the most famous works of his career. In December 1896, he showed a selection of the Beaupré landscapes in Montreal, and a report in the Gazette declared “His snow scenes are unusually fine and very pleasing to the eye. The purple mountain of St. Anne figures prominently in many, while the quaint old farm houses and barns are natural in the extreme. In this the artist excels.” [3] These paintings were just the beginning: in January 1897, Cullen returned to Beaupré to paint with James Wilson Morrice (1865–1924), and he submitted winter landscapes to both the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and the Art Association of Montreal exhibitions that spring. 

The treatment of the winter scene quickly became Cullen’s most distinctive subject and it would remain so for the rest of his life—he painted winter landscapes everywhere from Quebec City and Montreal to Lac Tremblant and the Cache River, and he also created numerous winter works in pastel. These compositions often dominated his exhibitions, and they were seen as representing something distinctly Canadian. Commenting on his fascination with winter at the opening of his 1930 retrospective, Cullen stated that in Canada, “Snow and cold are the greatest things we have. They give us our qualities.”[4]  By that time Cullen had become revered for his study of the season, and when he died in 1934, the prominent critic Samuel Morgan-Powell noted that international critics had described him as “perhaps the greatest painter of ice and snow of his generation.” [5]

Jocelyn Anderson

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Footnotes: 

[1] Art Gallery of Ontario Archives, “Maurice Cullen RCA, by R.W. Pilot M.B.E. RCA Address given at the Arts Club of Montreal,” 1937, 2–3. 

[2] Edmond Dyonnet, R.C.A., Memoirs of a Canadian Artist, translated by the author with assistance from Frank L. Flight (Montreal, 1951), 65. 

[3] Samuel Morgan-Powell, “An Appreciation,” Montreal Daily Star, March 28, 1934, 11. 

[4] “Maurice Cullen’s Paintings on Show,” Gazette, Montreal, November 29, 1930, 15. 

[5] Samuel Morgan-Powell, “An Appreciation,” Montreal Daily Star, March 28, 1934, 11.