This charming winter landscape by Danish artist Viggo Pedersen (1854-1926) depicts a horse-drawn sleigh stopping beside a farmhouse on the edge of a snow-covered village. Painted in 1880, when Pedersen was just 26, it dates to the beginning of a distinguished career during which he became known for his sensitive depictions of Danish rural life.

A village road winds gently through deep snow towards a white church, its simple tower rising above the surrounding houses. In the foreground, a substantial thatched farmhouse sits beneath a heavy covering of snow, while two horses have stopped alongside it with a small sleigh. But this isn't really a painting about winter weather; it's about life carrying on in it. 

Several villagers have gathered around the sleigh. One man appears to be tending to whatever it carries, while another stands alongside him and a woman watches from beside the farmhouse. Further along the road, two more figures make their way towards the village. Pedersen has given each person remarkably little detail, yet together they create the impression of a small community going about an entirely ordinary winter's day. 

The snow is beautifully observed. Across the road, runners, hooves and footsteps have disturbed its surface, creating parallel grooves and irregular tracks that lead us naturally into the composition. Snow has accumulated thickly against walls and fences, settled upon branches and formed great rounded caps over the haystacks beside the farmhouse.

Roofs become smoother and heavier. Hedges almost disappear. Familiar tracks become shallow trenches and ordinary objects acquire strange new outlines. Against all this white, the smallest touches of colour suddenly matter: the warm chestnut horse, the woman's dark red skirt, the caps of the figures gathered around the sleigh.

Even the horses have left their own little record of the cold. Their lower legs disappear into the churned snow while the sleigh sits low behind them, ready to continue along the road.

The light is particularly lovely. This isn't a sparkling winter scene beneath a brilliant blue sky, but the softer illumination of an overcast day. Pedersen uses delicate blues, greys, creams and touches of pale pink to give the snow depth, while warmer browns emerge from the timbered farmhouse, trees and exposed ground.

Painted in 1880, the work predates Pedersen's formative travels to Paris, Switzerland and Italy the following year. He had trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts between 1871 and 1878, where his education was rooted in the Danish landscape tradition. Later encounters with French naturalism and newer approaches to light and colour would broaden his style considerably.

Here, however, his attention remains firmly upon the Danish countryside and the quiet rhythms of rural life. The snow makes the village beautiful. The marks left within it tell us that people live here.

Signed/dated in the lower left and held within a period gilt frame.

Learn more about Viggo Pedersen in our directory.

Medium: Oil on canvas
Overall size: 29” x 21½” / 73cm x 55cm
Year of creation: 1880
Labels & Inscriptions: Kleis' Kunsthandel framemaker's label on the reverse. 
Provenance: Private collection, Denmark.
Condition: Cleaned. Areas of fine and settled craquelure, as you would expect. The paint layer is stable. Frame in good condition with minor age-related wear.
Artist’s auction maximum: £34,000 achieved in 2002 for ‘Picking Poppies, Sora (1884)’.
Our reference: BRV2326