pdf - Schwarz Gallery

Although Birch was occasionally criticized for his choice of subjects and his literalism, the fact that he produced a great
number of similar canvases suggests that there was a market for snow pieces. A general prejudice against the verism of Dutch
landscapes and still lifes nonetheless persisted into the 1840s among many self-styled connoisseurs. The appropriateness of
a winter subject was questioned, for example, in an unidentified newspaper review of the third annual exhibition of the
Artists’ Fund Society in 1837. The critic, identifying himself as “A Lover of the Arts,” 8 nonetheless singled out Birch’s Snow
Scene for hesitant praise:
This looks like a faithful copy from nature, without much choice in the selection of the scene. Nature, at
this season of the year, is not in her most attractive robes, and does not afford much scope for the pencil.
Mr. Birch executes landscapes of this kind with remarkable fidelity; but his home is on the deep. 9
Following the Civil War, however, public opinion had shifted in favor of genre paintings of winter pastimes. Art historian
Henry Tuckerman, writing in 1867 of another artist who specialized in winter scenes, stated that “lovers of art considered
one of Rene [sic] Francois Gignoux’s winter scenes essential to their limited collections; and orders flowed in upon him far
beyond his ability to execute.” 10