Visualizing Cold in Works of Art

It probably does not need saying by now, but the last week has been quite cold in New England. I thought it might be interesting to see how artists visually interpret the idea of “cold.” 

Noro Kaiseki (1747–1828, Japan), Winter. Ink and light color on paper mounted on wooden frame, 5'9" x 12'4" (171.8 x 372.1 cm). Image © 2025 Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts. (WAM-524)

If the snow-covered forms and grisaille-like (painted in shades of gray) technique of this byobu (six-fold screen) don’t make you feel the chill of a winter day, then nothing will! Noro Kaiseki believed the finished painting should represent the true landscape in the artist’s mind. The importance of the work was not to depict a specific location, but to evoke the sense of a type of landscape in the muted palette. The subject matter of this painting might be accumulated impressions the artist garnered from traveling around Japan.

The asymmetrical balance of the entire landscape is an example of a Japanese aesthetic that valued spontaneous development of a subject, an impulse picked up on by Impressionist artists in the late 1800s. Kaiseki brilliantly used atmospheric perspective, showing less and less detail toward the background to indicate misty depth. It is a much more effective technique than the traditional walls of mist—often in gold leaf—that were meant to indicate deep space. On the other hand, the “piling up” of forms is a traditional aspect of Chinese landscape.

The Edo period (1615–1868) of the Tokugawa shogunate marked 250 years of isolation in Japan. During this time, Japanese artists turned to centuries-old Japanese and Chinese traditions for inspiration. A variety of painting styles flourished throughout this time period. Chief among them was the Chinese-influenced (mostly Song dynasty, 960–1279) monochromatic ink style. The traditional Japanese love of color and pattern is seen in the yamato-e style. It characterized much of the work of the Kanō school, the dominant group of artists who served the military nobility.

By the early 1800s, both of these trends in Japanese painting began showing influences of newer Chinese painting (Ming dynasty, 1368–1644, and Qing dynasty, 1644–1912), as well as Western art. These influences seeped through the only port open to Dutch, Chinese, and Portuguese traders: Nagasaki. The late-Edo period interest in Chinese monochromatic painting, based on the Confucian ideal of reverence for nature and its principles, appealed to Japanese art patrons. Although there were no “scholar/amateur” (literati) painters in Japan as in China, the newly revived Confucian ideals appealed to the Japanese respect for ethical and intellectual achievement. Japanese artists were able to study prints of Chinese art and printed Chinese manuals with lessons about painting in the traditional style. The style that emerged was called nan-ga, or “southern style painting,” based on its ultimate roots in Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279) Chinese painting. 

Kaiseki was born near Osaka to a merchant family. By the age of twenty, he was living in Kyoto, where he studied under the nan-ga painter Ike no Taiga (1723–1767). A low-ranking job inspecting copper mines after that led him to appreciate landscape as a subject for painting. He was an avid scholar of Chinese painting theories, particularly from the Song dynasty. He was drawn to the scholar/amateur branch of Song painting, where painters shunned perfection. Since there was no scholar/amateur class in Japan, the style was seen across societal groups from samurai to merchant. Kaiseki was an example of the latter.

George Catlin (1796–1872, United States), Dying Buffalo in a Snowdrift, plate 17 from the North American Indian Portfolio, ca. 1844. Hand-colored lithograph on paper, 16 ⅛" x 22 ¾" (41 x 57.8 cm). Image © 2025 Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio. (BIAA-350)

In this view the reader is introduced to the ultimum of dreariness and severity which the hunters of the northern prairies have to contend with in the depths of winter. An intensely cold day, with dry and sand-like snow three or four feet in depth, drifting before the wind, and a herd of buffaloes laboring to plough their way through it, whilst they are urged on by a party of Indians on snow-shoes, deeply clad in furs, and dealing death to them with their spears.—George Catlin, North American Indian Portfolio

George Catlin ends the passage above for plate 17 in the North American Indian Portfolio by reminding the viewer that the episode was recorded “by my own hand," watching the buffalo struggle in the snow, awaiting death by the spear. This view of the northern plains once again emphasizes winter in the choice of colors. The pallid yellow-green sky almost merges with the snowy landscape as clouds of powdery snow waft into the wind. This record of the great numbers of buffalo then still present on the plains is an invaluable—if not sad—historical record of what the United States has lost.

There was a steady push westward in the United States after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Emboldened by their victories in the American Revolution (1775–1783) and War of 1812, Americans developed a certain arrogant presumption to their "God-given" right (so-called Manifest Destiny) to occupy the entire land stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific south of Canada and north of Mexico.  

The Indian Removal Act of 1830 basically gave settlers the right to any Indigenous lands east of the Mississippi in exchange for land (reservations) in the West. Even at this early point, there were artists who realized the unique culture of Indigenous Peoples and sought to document it in their art. Two of the earliest to do so were Charles Bird King (1785–1862) and George Catlin.

Born in Pennsylvania, Catlin grew up on farms in New York where he absorbed stories about Indigenous Peoples of America. Although he began a legal career at his father's urging, Catlin abandoned it in 1821 to pursue a career as an artist. In 1828, he received the inspiration that guided his painting the rest of his life when he witnessed a delegation of Indigenous Peoples from the West in Philadelphia. Catlin subsequently decided to devote his life documenting Indigenous Peoples of America, who he felt had no biographers of their own.

Catlin is the first white artist credited with documenting Indigenous Peoples of the Great Plains on their traditional lands. Between 1830 and 1836, Catlin traveled in the West from a base in Saint Louis, Missouri, for five months out of each year. In summer, he sketched what he saw of the lives of Indigenous cultures. Many of his prints are derived from these sketches. In winter, he produced paintings of the sketches in his studio, making versions for twenty years after the original visits. The painting of this scene is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. 

George Catlin, Buffalo Lancing in the Snow Drifts - Sioux, 1861/1869. Oil on canvas mounted on paperboard, 18 1/16" x 25 ⅛" (45.9 x 63.8 cm). © 2025 National Gallery of Art, Washington, Paul Mellon Collection. (NGA-P0949)

From his travels, Catlin eventually produced more than 600 paintings, which he exhibited in his North American Indian Gallery. In 1844, Catlin issued lithographic versions of many his paintings in the North American Indian Portfolio, which was published in London. This was an effort to reap larger returns from exhibitions and to enhance the gallery, improving chances of the federal government to purchasing the collection. 

Joan Mitchell (1925–1992, United States), George Went Swimming at Barnes Hole, but It Got Too Cold, 1957. Oil on canvas, 85 ¼" x 78 ¼" (216.5 x 198.8 cm). Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, New York, Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr. © 2025 Estate of Joan Mitchell. (AK-456)

And yes, even in nonobjective abstraction the artist can get across the idea of cold! Joan Mitchell defined the works of her mature period as “expressionist landscapes.” Although excited by the gestural nature of action painting, she rejected the New York School's notion of non-narrative, all-over painting that typically eschewed specific subject designation. Her works, inspired by nature, were not meant to represent nature, but rather represent what she took away from her encounters with nature. They represent experiences that made up her life, experiences where she “felt something” or “loved something.” That would certainly explain the underlying feelings Mitchell was displaying in George Went Swimming at Barnes Hole, but It Got Too Cold, which she painted in her New York studio in 1957. 

George was a beloved pet standard poodle with whom the artist would swim in Barnes Hole on Long Island. Typical of Mitchell's compositions of this period, an explosion of gestural color emanates from the predominantly white background. Her initial burst of colors contained various hues of yellow. As she worked further, she added blues and white to create a more relaxed, “chill” aesthetic. This may have been the result of the artist's contemplation on the fact that George had died in 1954. The cool palette also masterfully imitates the splashing of water, all of which is neatly contained in this all-over composition.

Born in Chicago, from an early age Mitchell showed an interest in and love of painting, art, and poetry. She grew up comfortably in Chicago as the younger of two girls. Her mother, a poet, writer, and editor, sparked her lifelong interest in poetry. Her father, a successful doctor, would often take her to the Art Institute of Chicago and other museums.

After studying both art and English at Smith College from 1942 to 1944, Mitchell transferred to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1944 to study painting. The traditional training included classes in anatomy, art history, and drawing from the figure. Her student work showed the influence of Vasily Kandinsky (1866–1944), Henri Matisse (1869–1954), and the late-period works of Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), all of which she saw in the Art Institute. She graduated from the Art Institute in 1947.

Mitchell moved to Brooklyn in 1947 with the intent of studying with pioneer German American abstractionist Hans Hofmann (1880–1966). She was intimidated by his teaching style and only attended one of his classes. But it was during her time in New York that she was first introduced to the ideas and artwork of the New York School, which was dominated by the Abstract Expressionists.

Attending many museums and galleries, Mitchell saw the works of nascent Abstract Expressionists Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) and Jackson Pollock (1912–1956). After spending a year in Paris, she returned to the United States in the fall of 1949. She went back to the School of the Art Institute, where she earned an MFA in 1950. That same year Mitchell moved to New York and was quickly immersed in the local Abstract Expressionist art scene. She was part of the regular gatherings of artists and poets at the Cedar Street Tavern and became friends with painters such Abstract Expressionists as Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) and Franz Kline (1910–1962).  She was one of the few women artists asked to join The Club on East 8^th Street, an exclusive center for lectures and discussion that provided a supportive environment for the Abstract Expressionists. Mitchell was included in their seminal 9th Street Art Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture curated by Leo Castelli in the spring of 1951.

Marking the true beginning of her career as an artist, Mitchell had her first solo New York City exhibition at The New Gallery in 1952. The exhibition's critical success led to yearly exhibitions at the Stable Gallery. Through the 1950s, her work became more confident. She rejected the pervasive attention to automatist (spontaneous, working without a plan) painting among the Abstract Expressionists, insisting on content rather than simply process. Her artwork developed the qualities that would continue to define her paintings—her sense of color, composition, and tension between bold and subtle elements.

Dividing her time between New York and Paris during the 1950s, Mitchell moved to France permanently in 1959. This bold step moved her away from her success in New York and its burgeoning art world. Paris offered a different atmosphere and a different group of friends and artists, including her long-term partner, French Canadian artist Jean-Paul Riopelle (1923–2002). In 1967, Mitchell settled in Vétheuil, a village located 37 miles (60 km) northwest of Paris that was often portrayed by leading French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840–1926).