Winter Landscape

Winter Landscape (Winterlandschaft) is an oil on canvas by Cuno Amiet dated 1916, 59 by 73 centimetres, signed 'CA 16' in dark pink at lower right; it belonged for decades to the artist's goddaughter in Basel and is now privately owned.

The painting shows the hamlet of Loch near Oschwand — the village in the canton of Bern where Amiet had lived since 1898 — with the cleft of the Mutzgraben and the rounded crest of the Oberbühlknubel rising behind it. Under bright winter sun Amiet builds the view from the colour combination he favoured for snow pictures: light blue, pink and pale yellow, set off by a few strong dark accents. Leafless pink trees and bands of reddish woodland stand out against the slopes, while the pale ribbon of a road or frozen stream runs along the foot of the canvas.

An inscription in pink on the stretcher reads 'Meinem lieben Patenkind Ebba Grisebach. C. Amiet.' — 'to my dear godchild Ebba Grisebach'. Added at an unknown date, the dedication was for Ebba Grisebach (1912–2006), daughter of the philosopher Eberhard Grisebach-Spengler and his wife Charlotte, both of whom Amiet had also portrayed; he painted Ebba herself in 1922 and again in 1934. The canvas remained with Ebba Wieland-Grisebach in Basel until 2006 and then passed into other private hands.

The picture is one of several winter scenes of the same title: a different Winterlandschaft of 1907, showing the village of Winistorf under snow, belongs to the Kunsthaus Zürich.