Ernst Huber winter landscape 1943

The young Ernst Huber began his career as an autodidact in the 1920s. The success of his first exhibition in 1919 encouraged him to pursue a career as an artist. Just ten years later he was already a member of the Vienna Secession and regularly took part in its exhibitions. On many journeys through Europe and the world he collected impressions for his watercolours and oil paintings.

In our winter painting from 1943 the artist probably captured a detail of the snow-covered landscape in Wagrain, Salzburg. Huber lived there from 1942 to 1957. The winter close-up shows dense snow in the foreground, a sparse fence, an icy stream leading us into the picture, to the left of which is a snow-covered wooden shed and a solitary tree. The scene is framed by a greyish-brown backdrop, which suggests the snow-covered forest slope in the distance and dragging wafts of mist. Huber creates a dense atmosphere here with a greatly reduced color palette. Brown and grey in various hues, blue and of course white, the color of winter. With this painting, so concise in terms of color and motif, Huber once again demonstrates his masterly skills as a painter of winter scenes.