Effect of Snow on Petit-Montrouge

Effet de neige à Petit-Montrouge
Édouard Manet, 1870
59.7 × 49.7 cm
Oil on Canvas
National Museum Cardiff

Effect of Snow on Petit-Montrouge (French: Effet de neige à Petit-Montrouge) is an 1870 landscape painting by the French painter Édouard Manet. The oil on canvas painting shows a winter view of Petit-Montrouge, an area in the 14th arrondissement of Paris. Manet painted this picture while a member of the National Guard during the 1870–71 Siege of Paris of the Franco-Prussian War. As opposed to the history painters of his time, Manet does not show a heroic view of battle, but rather the dusky ambiance of a looming battle. The image reflects Manet's loss of hope about the military situation, his profound loneliness, and the deprivation he suffered during this time. It is one of the few landscapes in Manet's oeuvre, and is one of Manet's first plein air paintings. Today it is in the collection of the National Museum Cardiff.

References

• Richard R. Brettell: Impression : Painting quickly in France 1860–1890. Exhibit catalog, London, Amsterdam, Williamstown, Yale University Press, New Haven und London 2000, ISBN 0-300-08447-1.
• Edward Lilley: Manet's "modernity" and "Effet de neige à Petit-Montrouge" in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, September 1991
• Michael Wilson: Manet at Work. Exhibit catalog, National Gallery, London 1983, ISBN 0-901791-87-3.