Winter landscapes in Western art

The depiction of winter landscapes in Western art begins in the 15th century, as does landscape painting in general. Wintry and snowy landscapes are very rarely seen in earlier European painting since most of the subjects were religious. Gold ground paintings had no painted backgrounds and other narrative scenes had highly stylized trees and mountains.

In the 15th century, the calendar pages of the most lavishly decorated books of hours, giving the dates of feast days important to the owner, began to include miniatures of the Labours of the Months. Much the most famous of these sets of scenes is in Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, from the beginning of the period. By the last quarter of the century, manuscripts of the Ghent–Bruges school often include a set, including two or three winter scenes for the coldest months, some with a snowy landscape.

The snowy landscape as a genre in painting really begins in the 1560's with five paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder made between 1563 and perhaps 1567. Two of these in particular were copied many times over the following decades, and other artists also created their own snowy compositions. Several painters came to specialize in such scenes in Dutch Golden Age painting.

Fierce weather and snow appealed to Romantic painters, and later the Impressionists. As Russian painting took to landscapes in the 19th century, snow unsurprisingly often features. The depiction of snow in Europe is mainly a northern European subject.