912 - Paul Baltin, winter landscape with a stream and snow-covered mountains, dated 1955

Paul Baltin, winter landscape with a stream and snow-covered mountains, dated 1955 Oil on canvas, signed 'Paul Baltin' and dated (19)55 lower left. A winter landscape with an open, darkly lying stream winding from the foreground into the centre of the picture; on both sides high piled snow with hollows of shadow set off in blue, on the right bank two snow-laden spruces and tall bare birches. Behind it the ground rises to a wide snow-covered range of hills, the horizon closed by a staggered blue-grey chain of mountains. The sky in broken white and pale blue. Age-appropriate condition, craquelure. Image 50 x 61 cm (HxW), framed in a gilt-coloured moulding, frame bumped, frame width 7 cm The winter landscape with an open watercourse is among the established pictorial tasks of landscape painting: the dark stream leads the eye into the depth, while the snow-covered banks articulate the surface and allow the painter to develop the play of white, blue and grey across the full width of the picture. In the 1950s such views were widespread as pictures for the living room and were produced by numerous painters in small numbers for the regional art trade.