Printable Vintage Art: Winter River Landscape by Adolf Kaufmann

There are such a lot of things that have no place in summer and autumn and spring. Everything that’s a little shy and a little rum. Some kinds of night animals and people that don’t fit in with others and that nobody really believes in. They keep out of the way all the year. And then when everything’s quiet and white and the nights are long and most people are asleep—then they appear.
― Tove Jansson, Moominland Midwinter

But now she loved winter. Winter was beautiful “up back” - almost intolerably beautiful. Days of clear brilliance. Evenings that were like cups of glamour - the purest vintage of winter's wine. Nights with their fire of stars. Cold, exquisite winter sunrises. Lovely ferns of ice all over the windows of the Blue Castle. Moonlight on birches in a silver thaw. Ragged shadows on windy evenings - torn, twisted, fantastic shadows. Great silences, austere and searching. Jewelled, barbaric hills. The sun suddenly breaking through grey clouds over long, white Mistawis. Ice-grey twilights, broken by snow-squalls, when their cosy living-room, with its goblins of firelight and inscrutable cats, seemed cosier than ever. Every hour brought a new revalation and wonder.
― L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle

A vintage landscape painting by Adolf Kaufmann (1848–1916) entitled “Winter River Landscape”; oiginally found on Wikimedia here. Digitally enhanced version can be downloaded as a 14” x 11” @ 300 ppi JPEG here.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

My Photo Journal: January Cold (1)

“January”

The days are short, / The sun a spark
Hung thin between / The dark and dark.

Fat snowy footsteps / Track the floor,
And parkas pile up / Near the door.

The river is / A frozen place
Held still beneath / The trees' black lace.

The sky is low. / The wind is gray.
The radiator / Purrs all day.
― John Updike, A Child's Calendar

It is growing cold. Winter is putting footsteps in the meadow. What whiteness boasts that sun that comes into this wood! One would say milk-colored maidens are dancing on the petals of orchids. How coldly burns our sun! One would say its rays of light are shards of snow, one imagines the sun lives upon a snow crested peak on this day. One would say she is a woman who wears a gown of winter frost that blinds the eyes. Helplessness has weakened me. Wandering has wearied my legs.
― Roman Payne

Image shows a winter-bare tree standing in a field of snow-draped goldenrod and other native vegetation, their wild beauty unbowed by harsh winds or icy cold. I took the photo on a walk around the Civic Recreation Complex in Whitby, Ontario. Are you still going out and about despite the inclement weather? Or have you decided to cocoon at home until spring returns? Leave a comment below to tell us how you're handling January.
Photo © FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

Printable Vintage Art: A Snowy Morning by F.F. Palmer

The snow was endless, a heavy blanket on the outdoors; it had a way about it. A beauty. But I knew that, like many things, beauty could be deceiving.
― Cambria Hebert, Whiteout

I have not yet lost a feeling of wonder, and of delight, that this delicate motion should reside in all the things around us, revealing itself only to him who looks for it. I remember, in the winter of our first experiments, just seven years ago, looking on snow with new eyes. There the snow lay around my doorstep — great heaps of protons quietly precessing in the earth's magnetic field. To see the world for a moment as something rich and strange is the private reward of many a discovery.
― Edward M. Purcell

A vintage Currier & Ives lithograph of a painting by Fanny Palmer (1812-1876) entitled “A Snowy Morning”; oiginally found on Wikimedia here. Digitally enhanced version can be downloaded as a 17” x 12” @ 300 ppi JPEG here.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

My Photo Journal: A Quiet Start to January

Are the days of winter sunshine just as sad for you, too?
When it is misty, in the evenings, and I am out walking by myself,
it seems to me that the rain is falling through my heart
and causing it to crumble into ruins.
― Gustave Flaubert

A cold wind was blowing from the north,
and it made the trees rustle like living things.
― George R.R. Martin

I do an awful lot of thinking and dreaming about things in the past and the future
- the timelessness of the rocks and the hills - all the people who have existed there.
I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape
- the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter.
Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.
― Andrew Wyeth

December and January have been very quiet months for us. Usually spent in celebration with a flurry of birthdays and holiday get-togethers, we were instead filled with listless introspection, downcast by the passing of my father-in-law in November while also being plagued with health/pain problems.

Christmas and New Year were spent mostly walking in woods and along wintry lanes. These pictures were taken in Darlington Provincial Park. Trudging up to the wind-swept beach, we saw this tiny little giraffe braving the cold. He did make us smile and provided a glimmer of warm-weather activities. I hope his owner comes back to collect him when the weather improves!

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees,
just as things grow in fast movies,
I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

© FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

Printable Vintage Art: Swans by Bruno Liljefors

Swans, 1918
by Bruno Liljefors (1860–1939)

There was something in the clear, pine-scented air of that winter morning that seemed to bring him back his joyousness and his ardour for life.
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

He thought that she looked like Winter; meaning both the girl he had once known and the season. He had always believed that winter's beauty deepened further into the season, when the memory of fall and the promise of spring were stripped away and there was nothing to do but accept the day-in, day-out reality of what winter entailed. This was what he thought when he looked at her: that the embattled woman before him was a wonder to behold, and, as much as he wished he might have spared her the pain of the last eleven years, it contributed to her spellbinding presence.
― Ben Spencer, Many Savage Moons

Painting originally found on Wikimedia. Digitally enhanced version of the painting as a 10" x 8" @ 300 ppi JPEG here.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Vintage Art Appreciation: Winter Landscape with River and Bird by Julian Fałat

Winter Landscape with River and Bird, 1913
by Julian Fałat (1853–1929)
But now she loved winter. Winter was beautiful "up back" - almost intolerably beautiful. Days of clear brilliance. Evenings that were like cups of glamour - the purest vintage of winter's wine. Nights with their fire of stars. Cold, exquisite winter sunrises. Lovely ferns of ice all over the windows of the Blue Castle. Moonlight on birches in a silver thaw. Ragged shadows on windy evenings - torn, twisted, fantastic shadows. Great silences, austere and searching. Jewelled, barbaric hills. The sun suddenly breaking through grey clouds over long, white Mistawis. Ice-grey twilights, broken by snow-squalls, when their cosy living-room, with its goblins of firelight and inscrutable cats, seemed cosier than ever. Every hour brought a new revalation and wonder.
― L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle

December is an old friend; it reminds you of the past, together you share some laughs and tears, you feel warm-hearted though it’s freezing outside. But, the goodbye is inevitable. May the memories we share with this friend next year be filled with comfort, peace and Love.
― Mohamed Atef

Following dark winter's strife, a warm air rises, teemed with life. Birth, rebirth, as the waiting die. Old love, new love sprouts wings to fly.
― Phar West Nagle

Vintage Art Appreciation: Winter Landscape in Areskutan by Carl Brandt

Winter Landscape in Areskutan, 1921
by Carl Brandt (1852 - 1930)
I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.
― Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.
Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.
Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.
Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.
― Yoko Ono