Winter is often thought of as a season of bareness and retreat, with diminished light and a reduced palette. Yet for painters attentive to atmosphere, winter offers a particular clarity – enlivened skies, cool colours, and fleeting but dramatic light. In British painting, winter light has repeatedly been used not to evoke bleakness, but to heighten perception and emotional register.
J.M.W. Turner was perhaps the great chronicler of winter luminosity. Throughout his life, he returned to Margate, drawn by what he described as ‘the loveliest skies in all Europe’. The town’s coastal microclimate produces a silvery, volatile light, especially pronounced in winter months. In Waves Breaking on a Lee Shore at Margate (Study for ‘Rockets and Blue Lights’), currently displayed at the Turner Contemporary as part of the 250th anniversary of his birth, Turner captures this effect with remarkable economy. Icy blues, fractured whites and a glowing horizon convey not coldness but movement – light as something startlingly restless, quicksilver and alive.
Another Palefire hero, Victor Pasmore’s engagement with winter light is quieter but equally resonant. Before his later abstraction, Pasmore worked in a figurative mode that was deeply attentive to landscape and atmosphere. The Quiet River: The Thames at Chiswick, held in the Tate collection, belongs to this earlier period. The painting presents the river under a subdued, wintry sky – soft blues circulate through water and air, offset by muted pinks and greys. Domestic details – the riverbank, distant structures – are held in gentle suspension. Pasmore’s winter is not dramatic but more contemplative, its light diffused and steady, suggesting time slowed down to a crawl.
Celia Paul continues this lineage of attentive, inward-looking observation. Much of her work is shaped by place, particularly the views from her long-term studio near the British Library. Winter light recurs in her paintings of the city, often pale, cool and quietly insistent. In her painting of the Brontë Parsonage, the restrained palette and hushed atmosphere suggest a winter setting. The scene is bathed in a glorious, icy light, and the sky seems thin and distant. As with her London views, she portrays a very present, all-encompassing light that settles into buildings, landscapes and lives.
Across Turner, Pasmore and Paul, winter light becomes a means of distillation. Colour is pared back, blues come forward, and light itself becomes the subject – not diminished, but newly intensified by the season.
For us, winter light is not only something beautiful to be experienced but something to be shaped and lived with. The cooler months sharpen our sensitivity to colour and tone – blues become clearer, more mineral; whites become more chalky, with the faintest hint of green. Many of our colourways – from deeper, aqueous blues to paler, mint-inflected whites – are designed to work with low winter sun and early dusk, when artificial light from table lamps and ceiling lights must take on a more active role.
Image credits: The Tate, Celia Paul / Victoria Miro