Boathouse, Winter, Harlem River

Ernest Lawson

National Gallery of Art

This painting shows a snowy landscape with boats on a pale green river. Closest to us, there are thin, leafless trees in a snow-covered field, and on the other bank beyond the river are more thin trees with pale, hazy buildings visible in the distance. In the center, a gray-and-white house appears to sit on the edge of the water, one of the boats resting on the land next to it. A curving fence separates the white field, extending from the house towards the lower right corner of the painting. There are some more indistinct objects on the land in shades of red and black. The sky above the scene is a pale blue-gray that is almost the same color as the snowy ground. The brushstrokes in the painting are small dots and dashes of different colors that all overlap, giving the scene a slightly blurred impression.