Winter Landscape

David Johannes Niemelä

1919

Oil on canvas

Minneapolis Institute of Art

A frozen waterfall cascades down a rocky cliff face, with snow-covered ground in the foreground and a line of trees against a bright blue sky. “Winter Landscape” was painted by the Finnish painter David Johannes Niemelä in 1919, two years after Finland had declared independence from Russia in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution. In the years leading up to Finland's independence, Finnish artists used landscape painting as a means of resistance against Russian influence. Images of Finland’s natural world helped the country shape a distinctive national identity. Niemelä’s painting evokes the physical tangibility of this wintry scene—the bright snow drifts, dense frozen cascades, and soaring pine and birch trees –while playing up the rhythmic abstraction of these form