On Sunday, October 25, 2026, the clocks go back to standard time, and with that extra hour comes what Swedes call the autumn darkness: evenings arrive an hour earlier, and within five weeks it’s the first Sunday of Advent. This is precisely when a snowy poster on the wall does the most good. Here, we look at three artists who painted and printed winter better than most—Monet, Fjæstad, and Kawase Hasui—and how to hang their work so the room stays warm until spring.
Quick facts: Daylight saving time ends on Sunday, October 25, 2026. According to SMHI, meteorological winter is counted from the first of five consecutive days with a daily mean temperature of 0.0 degrees or lower—in Luleå, this normally occurs around October 30, while several stations in southern Sweden never experience winter on average. The first Sunday of Advent falls on Sunday, November 29, 2026, and the winter solstice is around December 21.
Winter according to SMHI—and why your wall doesn’t have to wait
The calendar says winter begins in December. SMHI says otherwise: meteorological winter isn’t a date but a condition. It begins on the first day of a five-day period in which the average temperature is 0.0 degrees or lower, and a later spell of mild weather doesn’t end it. The autumn count always starts on August 1. In Luleå-Bergnäset, winter arrives around October 30 on average. Across much of Skåne and the West Coast, it never arrives at all in a typical year.
That difference is the point of the entire article. Winter in southern Sweden is often more about a lack of light and color than about cold. The grass stays green, the sky gray-white, and the afternoon fades by half past three. That’s when the wall needs to do what the landscape doesn’t—offer a real winter, with crisp air, blue shadows, and snow that glows despite the darkness. A snow scene is therefore not decoration for snowy places, but a substitute for what’s missing.
Monet’s The Magpie: why snow on a poster should have blue shadows
The most famous snow motif in Western art was painted in the winter of 1868–1869 near Étretat in Normandy. Claude Monet’s The Magpie measures 89 by 130 centimeters and is his largest winter landscape. It depicts a farmyard in the snow, a gate—and a single black bird perched on top of it. Art historian Michael Howard has described it as an “extraordinary depiction of the bone-chilling cold of a snowbound late winter afternoon.”
The revolutionary aspect was the color. Monet painted snow with blue shadows because yellow sunlight against white creates a blue-violet complementary color in the shade. In 1869, it looked like a mistake. The Salon jury rejected the painting in April of that year, and a critic summed up the jury’s opinion by calling it "too vulgar and too crude." It was not until 1984 that the Musée d'Orsay acquired it, and today The Magpie is considered one of the museum’s best-loved works. The same Monet wrote in a letter to Frédéric Bazille that he thought the countryside was "perhaps even more charming in winter than in summer."
For interior design, the lesson is concrete. A poster featuring snow should never be white and gray. Look for images where the shadows are blue, where the light comes from low down, and where a single dark detail – a bird, a tree trunk, a roof – gives the eye somewhere to rest. You can find several like these among our Monet posters, and we’ve written about his centenary year in Monet: 100 Years at Orangeriet.
"A white winter scene comes to life only when the shadows have a color of their own."
Fjæstad in Arvika: Painter of the Swedish Winter
Gustaf Fjæstad was born in 1868 – the same year Monet began The Magpie – and moved in 1897 to Taserud outside Arvika in Värmland, where he and his wife Maja became part of the Rackstad Colony. He studied under Richard Bergh and collaborated with both Bruno Liljefors and Carl Larsson. But it is for his winter landscapes that he is remembered. His work includes a cold winter evening from 1897, a frosty morning from 1919, and a snow-covered road with a fence from 1930.
What sets him apart from Monet is the temperature. Fjæstad’s winter is Swedish: harsh, still, and full of frost clinging to every blade of grass. His paintings are built from repeated horizontal and vertical lines – fences, tree trunks, mirror-smooth stretches of water – creating an almost decorative rhythm. That rhythm makes the scenes work well across a long wall in a hallway or dining area, where they can hang as a calm series. You can find more of Sweden’s landscape heritage in the collection Swedish artworks.
Kawase Hasui’s Falling Snow: Japanese Woodblock Winter in a Small Format
The Japanese counterpart is Kawase Hasui, born May 18, 1883, and he is the great snow painter of the shin-hanga movement. Together with publisher Shōzaburō Watanabe, he began publishing in 1918, and in 1920 he printed his first scene of falling snow. His best-selling print, Zōjō-ji Temple in Shiba, came out in 1925. Snow at Mukojima came out in 1931.
Between these dates, disaster struck: the 1923 Kantō earthquake destroyed Watanabe’s workshop, finished woodblocks, and 188 of Hasui’s sketchbooks. He started over, and that is one reason the surviving scenes have such a quiet gravity. Hasui was designated a Living National Treasure in 1956 and is now one of the most sought-after Japanese woodblock print masters. His snow scenes have a silence that works especially well in bedrooms and reading nooks, where the eye can wind down.
You can find his prints in the Hasui collection. Small sizes such as 21x30 or 30x40 work best – the woodblock prints are composed to be viewed up close.
From Courbet’s hunting scenes to Monet’s empty snow: how the winter image became modern
Snow as the main subject is younger than you might think. Gustave Courbet was painting snow effects as early as 1856, often with hunting scenes in which deer, dogs, and hunters added drama to the image. Monet’s first snow landscape, a cart on a snowy road near Honfleur, was inspired by Courbet – but Monet left out the hunt. For him, the snow itself is the action: the light, the cold, the silence after a snowstorm.
That shift is what makes a winter image useful as interior decor. A poster with a hunting scene wants to tell a story, and the story takes up space in the room. A poster with untouched snow, a wooden fence, and a still bird gives the room a different kind of presence: it doesn’t demand the viewer’s attention; it gives it back. That’s why all the scenes featured in this article are free of people. Kawase Hasui’s snow often includes a single lone figure, Fjæstad’s none at all, and Monet’s only a magpie on a gate.
Keep this in mind when choosing. If you already have a gallery wall with portraits and figures, a pure snow landscape makes a good complement – a breath of space between the more expressive images. If the wall is large and bare, it can take a more striking scene with a small human detail, such as a figure under an umbrella in the snowfall.
Winter, room by room: what works where
In the hallway, the snow scene greets you every time you come in from the cold, serving as a quiet reassurance: you’re home. Here, the image can be large and dark, since hallways rarely get much daylight. Choose an image with low light and blue shadows, and hang it on the wall you see first when the door opens.
In the bedroom, the image should be calm and understated. A small Hasui print in an oak or black frame above a dresser or beside the bed gives the evening light a gentle finish. Avoid images with lots of movement, such as blustery snowstorms, and opt instead for softly falling snow.
In the living room, a winter landscape looks best above the sofa or beside a stove or fireplace. This gives you the contrast between the fire's warmth and the picture's cold, which is the whole point of a seasonal print. In the kitchen and dining area, smaller sizes work best, arranged in a row along a wall or on a shelf where you can see them from the table.
In a home office, a winter landscape gives your eyes somewhere to rest between screens. Place it beside the monitor, not directly in front of it, so it serves as a break rather than a distraction.
How to hang art for winter: light, frame, and changing it up before the winter solstice
The winter solstice falls around December 21, and in Stockholm, daylight lasts just over six hours then. That means your wall is seen mostly in artificial light. So three things matter.
Warm light against cool images
A snow-scene poster with blue shadows comes to life under warm bulbs more than under cool LED light. Choose bulbs around 2700 kelvin and angle them toward the wall from the side to avoid glare on the glass. A simple trick is to place a small table lamp below the picture instead of relying on overhead lighting.
Oak or black frame
Snow and frost call for a frame that holds its own. Light oak adds warmth, while black creates contrast. A white frame against white snow makes the edges disappear. See all the options among our frames. A wide, warm-white mat particularly enhances frost motifs.
Change with the seasons
Winter posters don't need to hang all year. Change them once in November and once in March to enjoy the season's atmosphere without getting tired of them. We've gathered advice on a frame system that makes switching easy in our buying guide to changing prints with the seasons. And if you need more ideas for the darkest weeks, you'll find them in our guide to bright prints against the autumn darkness.
Tip: If you hang up the winter scene on Sunday, November 29, the first Sunday of Advent, you’ll have taken down the summer image in time and your wall will feel calm before the Christmas decorations go up. Leave the snow scene up until the end of February—by then, the days are brighter again, and a spring image will make more of a difference.
You can find more background information at SMHI on smhi.se, and Monet’s The Magpie is described in detail on Wikipedia.
Frequently asked questions about winter landscapes and snow scene posters
If you want to start with a poster that gives the room a real winter feel, explore our nature prints and look for images with blue shadows and low light.