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For most of human history, winter has been our most bitter adversary.

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Our ancestors faced brutal months of terrible cold,

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and the constant anxiety that food and fuel would last until the thaw.

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This heroic battle of endurance was ignored by artists,

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who saw nothing to paint in this harshest of seasons.

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But once we were able to protect ourselves from the worst the weather

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could do, we began to look at winter in a new way, to appreciate

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its transient beauty, its seasonal variety and its terrible power.

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Winter began to inspire images that are now amongst the most

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popular paintings of all time.

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The struggle for survival in a Flemish village,

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a temporary terra firma on the frozen Thames,

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the most remarkable out-flanking manoeuvre in the history of war.

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The more we understood the power of winter, the more we used art to

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explore our fascination with its effect on our lives.

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As our confidence grew, we developed a rational disregard for the cold

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and learnt to love the things that had previously scared us.

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But when winter occasionally reasserts its authority,

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we can still experience the terror our forebears knew.

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Across Northern Europe, the winter of 1564

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was the coldest of the century.

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Crops failed, and towns and cities were plagued with famine and riots.

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A deep and prolonged frost left many dying from starvation

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and hypothermia.

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This terrible period of cold was the first great

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winter of the Little Ice Age.

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By the time we get into the 16th century,

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there set in what has become known as the Little Ice Age.

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It's a very traumatic period for an agricultural society,

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and it's not until the 1800s that we start to warm up again.

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The winters were terrible, this winter of 1564-5

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saw the largest snowfalls that had been experienced in a generation.

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Nowhere were the effects of this vicious winter more keenly felt than

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in the Netherlands, where political turmoil and religious strife,

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caused by the Spanish occupation, added to the misery.

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But another revolution was taking place that winter,

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in the studio of a Flemish painter in Brussels.

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Pieter Bruegel was painting the first snowscape in art,

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Hunters In The Snow.

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Hunters In The Snow is one of the most original paintings of all time.

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It's an incredible, almost a seismic shift, in the world of art.

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Just forgetting about the snow for a moment, it's actually one of the

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first great landscapes. Bruegel has this trick of conveying immense

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amounts of territory and expressing the world itself,

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a sense of being on a planet, "This is what Earth is like in winter."

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CHORAL SINGING

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This picture, you know, it's one of the most famous landscape paintings

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in the world. I've asked myself, as an artist, why it's so iconic.

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You know, why is it sort of seared itself into the public imagination?

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We look at the hunters and their sort of slumped poses,

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and the way the dogs' heads are all kind of drooping down towards the

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snow. You know, we immediately get feelings of abjection,

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you're taken into that late afternoon, you know...

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For me, it's like,

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"Oh, God there's school tomorrow," it's an awfully depressing thing.

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But then in the background it's light and you're like,

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"Oh, the people are having fun, it's nice, they're all skating

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"on the ice." It's not a kind of uniformly pessimistic painting.

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Bruegel was one of the few Northern European painters who had

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travelled to Italy at this time.

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But it wasn't the great works of the Renaissance that influenced his

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pictures, it was the snowy landscape he had crossed on his journey.

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It's a made-up landscape. I mean, here we have the architecture

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and the people of Flanders juxtaposed with the Alps,

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you know, it doesn't exist this scene. The Alps were like

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the moon to people who lived in the low countries in this period.

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In the Renaissance, nobody thought of painting a winter's day.

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The sky should be blue, the atmosphere should be warm,

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that was what was beautiful,

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so winter was really a new idea in art,

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snow is beautiful, as well.

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It seems obvious to us now because it has been depicted in art for

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so long, but it was something that had to be invented,

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discovered, thought about.

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He's used the snow totally in the way that an art gallery

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works against the back of a painting,

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it's a stark nothingness against which, life moves.

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And so that's why it works, there's no different tones of snow,

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it's all crisp, white, there's no melting going on here,

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this is your perfect fantasy of a snowy day.

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And there is an element of truth about that. If you're

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out in the landscape in the snow, it always has a sort of a fluorescent

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glow to it that kind of comes up from the ground, and it bleaches out

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all the shadows like a slightly overexposed photograph.

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I mean there are the footprints of the hunters but, yeah,

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it's a pretty pristine scene, it is fairyland.

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Bruegel was one of the first painters whose work had

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overtly social and political messages,

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and this has made his pictures easily adaptable for parody.

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Hunters In The Snow remains immensely popular

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with political cartoonists.

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Most people know the title of the painting so they know what

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the context is that you're putting your political figures in.

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And so I subvert it, really, and it has to have a theme,

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if you like, and the one I did for The Spectator at Christmas

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last year was based on the Eurozone, and how that was collapsing.

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It's quite a depressing painting in a strange way,

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the colours are very muted and green, green-grey.

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And one of the great joys of parodying it

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is the fact that snow is obviously white, and what you're leaving is

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the whiteness of the paper, and that's terrific.

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I'll show you, basically, how it's done.

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I have several trees.

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I think there are four or five trees in the painting.

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Trees were the nicest thing to draw, actually, in a strange way.

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But where the trees end you've got this lovely absence of anything,

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which is what the snow is and just by leaving areas completely white

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and empty, you're creating something

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that's physically there, and you're making a picture out of it.

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He was just good at making it look bloody cold, really.

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Hunters In The Snow was an immediate hit for Bruegel.

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He had connected with something elemental about the experience

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of winter that we can still find in the picture today.

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The picture actually captures a very primal scene, one that is,

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in some way, hard-wired into our perception of the seasonal, maybe

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that's why it keys in so strongly to those of us who experience a winter.

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To this day, I cannot come over the snowy brow of a hill without

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thinking of that image, it's so intrinsic to the way that I perceive

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the juxtaposition between the cold outdoors and the warm inside.

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These elements seem to me

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to speak of a deep, atavistic human need for security and shelter, and

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also a kind of delight to the eye in wandering between the evocations of

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cold and winter in the foreground, and then, although of course it's

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very snowy in the mid-ground, there is the suggestion everywhere that

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there will be warmth down there, around the churchyard

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and around the hamlet and in the village.

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You know, even if we're with the hunters in the snow for a minute,

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there's a kind of Potterton boiler just down here.

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We have to ask why does the winter landscape gradually become

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a thing we can appreciate as beautiful,

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a thing that we can enjoy?

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And, of course, we can enjoy winter landscapes today

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because we can go back indoors and put the central heating on,

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so it's rather fascinating to look back

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and wonder at what points people have felt comfortable enough,

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have had a good enough quality of life, enough food and firewood,

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to be able to go outside into the cold and enjoy it.

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The position that the viewer occupies is sort of slightly up

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and behind the hunters.

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You're actually in the kind of position you're in nowadays

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in computer gaming when you pull back behind the head of an avatar.

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We're in a highly cinematic position to see

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the development of where the hunters are going to go,

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and ineluctably, you want to go with the hunters, quite clearly

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you're with the hunters, you want to seek that warmth.

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The painting perfectly captured a universally-shared emotional

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response to the experience of winter and showed that this darkest

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time of year could make a powerful subject for art.

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No-one seemed more pleased with this discovery than Bruegel himself.

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There is evidence he may even have gone back

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and added snow to paintings he had already finished.

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Bruegel was also a pioneer in another sense.

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Though there is no mention in the Bible of the time of year

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when Jesus was born, the Christian church had established

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the festival of the Nativity in the depths of winter.

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Bruegel was the first person to take this literally

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and set the events of the Christmas story in the snow,

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giving them a dramatic new realism for people who were

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experiencing exactly the conditions they saw in his paintings.

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Perhaps his most shocking scene is The Massacre Of The Innocents.

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He was working in a time when there was war in Flanders,

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the Spanish army were engaged in quite severe reprisals.

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He sets it not in ancient times but in his own time, in a village

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in a sort of village high street and soldiers are coming down the street,

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not Roman soldiers, they're Spanish soldiers, and it's terrifying.

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It's a bit like nowadays they might set a Shakespeare play in Iraq.

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This painting is very political in that it's

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set in a very brutal biblical scene, I mean, probably

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one of the most brutal, The Massacre Of The Innocents,

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and he's using that to get at the Spanish invaders.

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And here, Bruegel has painted it in the snow,

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emphasising the time of year, but also the kind of abject

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misery of the scene, the brutality and harshness

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is made all the more stark against the white background of the snow.

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In Bruegel's darkest paintings, the cruelty of winter is

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an image of the harshness of mortal life.

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It's merciless and it's an image of the unrelenting nature of winter,

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and perhaps, by extension, of the unrelenting nature of war.

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The cruel snow of Bruegel's Massacre

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was a reflection of the time in which he lived.

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The extreme cold of the Little Ice Age set in for the next 250 years,

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but these bitter winters could sometimes provide

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opportunities for amusement.

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The change in the climate was keenly felt in Britain, too,

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most famously causing the Thames to freeze over more regularly.

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In 1621, as a consequence, the Lord Mayor licensed more butchers

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to compensate for the scarcity of fish.

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But the cold was not the only thing that contributed to this phenomenon.

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The way that Old London Bridge was built was also a factor.

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This view of the river in 1677 was painted by Abraham Hondius,

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a Dutchman who had recently moved to London.

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The Old London Bridge has lots and lots of little arches,

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and these are big platforms in between, which block the flow

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of the river. As you soon as you had a few blocks of ice in the river,

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they'd nudge up against the piers, get trapped, and before you know it,

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the whole area to either side of London Bridge was frozen solid.

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Hondius has painted a confident Dutchman

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on skates amongst the revellers.

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He would have been very familiar with the frozen dykes

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and canals of Holland,

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but his Londoners are astonished by this alien environment.

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The British are not used to this.

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They're clambering and falling all over the place.

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I think there's a way in which Hondius is having

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a laugh at them. These are grown men turned into children again.

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He gives chaps like this a kind of heroic position,

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clambering on top of the ice floes here.

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The river has frozen right from the bridge up to

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Southwark Cathedral, which we can see over there,

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which at that point dominated the skyline. But it's not a flat

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surface at all, we've got these shards and splinters of ice.

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The ferrymen were out of work

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because they couldn't ply their trade across the water,

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and so they, rather proprietarily, decided that they could

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charge people to come down onto the ice, and then charge them again

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to leave the ice the other side. So people queued up,

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you can see them queuing to come down the steps here.

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And chap here being told to reach in his pocket for coins, but it

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was clearly worth paying your few coins

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cos this was like some kind of theme park.

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Hondius was very interested in the ways in which we imagined remote

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and extreme places, and in this same year, 1677,

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he painted what he called an arctic adventure, which actually looks very

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similar to this in that he imagines this barren, ice-clad landscape.

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So actually, he's making the centre of London

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into a version of the Arctic.

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Five years later, the arctic conditions returned.

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In 1683, Britain suffered what may have been the coldest

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winter of the Little Ice Age.

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Once again, the Thames froze but on this occasion

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the stillness of the air and the abrupt and dramatic drop

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in temperature left the river with a surface as smooth as glass.

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This virgin real estate was quickly colonised by entrepreneurial

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Londoners, who created a winter wonderland of epic proportions

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without paying a penny in rent for their premises.

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We're just in the right spot here, we can see Temple straight ahead,

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and this whole area became known as Temple Street,

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because it was actually a street.

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There were carriages crossing the river at this point.

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There were people queueing, thousands of people,

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flocking down onto the Thames to see this spectacle.

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And hundreds of little booths

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selling anything that you wanted on the ice.

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There was an unwritten but widely respected feeling that this

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temporary terra firma was somehow not part of the realm,

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and not subject to the normal laws of the land.

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The huge crowds attracted by the spectacle contained an uneasy mix

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of all classes and the courtesies of society were not respected.

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The King brought the Royal Family down

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to see what all the fuss was about,

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and left with this commemorative card recording his attendance.

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I suppose the whole obsession with souvenirs was really

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the sense that this absolutely transitory carnival would vanish

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overnight, absolutely just vanish.

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This city on ice - it really is a whole city, isn't it? -

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would be gone in an instant.

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The sense that the punters at the frost fair were

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living on borrowed time subsided as the cold continued.

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00:18:07,840 --> 00:18:11,840
The river was frozen for ten weeks and this enforced holiday had

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a devastating effect on the economy of the city.

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The fact that the Thames froze over almost brought the city

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to a standstill. And what do you do if you're forced to have

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a holiday in England? You go and put on a carnival like this.

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London's frost fairs demonstrated our ability to adapt to anything

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the weather could throw at us, and have a good time in the process.

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In the 19th century, the medieval London Bridge was rebuilt,

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the river embanked and the ice never returned.

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Londoners may have lost their opportunity for a midwinter party,

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but we were not alone in challenging the elements by having

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fun at the coldest time of the year.

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The Catholic Church adroitly adapted ancient

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seasonal rituals to its own ends, and before the austerity of Lent,

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revellers had traditionally celebrated their last chance

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00:19:05,680 --> 00:19:09,840
for feasting and excess in the depths of winter with a carnival.

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Nowhere was this tradition more indulgently embraced

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than in the serene Republic of Venice.

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This picture by Francesco Guardi, painted in the 1780s,

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shows the celebrations on Giovedi Grasso, the Thursday before Lent.

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00:19:35,240 --> 00:19:40,480
Well, what's so fantastic about this picture is the atmosphere, really.

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00:19:40,480 --> 00:19:44,600
There's just this sort of extraordinary sense of a party

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00:19:44,600 --> 00:19:47,480
going on, which I really, really like.

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I think there are lots of reasons for the carnival.

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00:19:50,360 --> 00:19:56,400
Fundamentally, it was about surviving this long, often really bitterly

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cold winter. It's saying, "Winter's OK, winter can actually be fun."

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00:20:01,680 --> 00:20:04,720
And it's also about what Venice is,

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00:20:04,720 --> 00:20:10,240
it establishes a kind of great sense of collective solidarity

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00:20:10,240 --> 00:20:13,560
between all the different people who lived in Venice.

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As a good Venetian, Guardi was reflecting this

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00:20:17,240 --> 00:20:20,320
solidarity in one crucial respect -

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00:20:20,320 --> 00:20:23,960
no-one in his painting looks ready to admit that it was too cold

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to be behaving like this.

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00:20:26,480 --> 00:20:31,480
I don't know what time Easter was that year, but it's on the

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Thursday, Giovedi Grasso,

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00:20:34,520 --> 00:20:38,840
and we're here on a Saturday,

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00:20:38,840 --> 00:20:41,120
two days later, in other words,

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00:20:41,120 --> 00:20:46,920
and all I can say is that it's seriously, freezing cold.

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They all look quite relaxed,

298
00:20:49,920 --> 00:20:52,920
and actually, the woman in the front, she's in a state

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00:20:52,920 --> 00:20:56,320
of slight undress. And of course, during the carnival in Venice that

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00:20:56,320 --> 00:21:00,000
would actually be quite difficult because what the picture doesn't

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00:21:00,000 --> 00:21:05,440
show us is how incredibly cold it can be in the winter in Venice.

302
00:21:05,440 --> 00:21:09,000
The wind seems as though it's coming straight from Russia.

303
00:21:11,040 --> 00:21:13,720
Francesco Guardi was a vedutista,

304
00:21:13,720 --> 00:21:17,520
a Venetian view painter, a few years younger than Canaletto,

305
00:21:17,520 --> 00:21:20,880
but he outlived his more famous rival by 25 years.

306
00:21:22,600 --> 00:21:25,280
I prefer Guardi to Canaletto, because he really does

307
00:21:25,280 --> 00:21:29,760
capture a sense of the movement and people of Venice.

308
00:21:29,760 --> 00:21:32,240
In Canaletto, it's all about order,

309
00:21:32,240 --> 00:21:36,360
and kind of Venice as it ought to be. Whereas in this painting, you've

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00:21:36,360 --> 00:21:41,960
got Venice as it really is and it's about people having a great time.

311
00:21:41,960 --> 00:21:45,440
Guardi didn't know it but his picture showed the Doge

312
00:21:45,440 --> 00:21:48,680
presiding over one of the last carnivals.

313
00:21:48,680 --> 00:21:54,560
Four years after his death in 1797, Napoleon invaded Northern Italy

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00:21:54,560 --> 00:21:57,760
and brought an end to 1,000 years of the Republic.

315
00:21:57,760 --> 00:22:00,360
The defeated Venetians stopped celebrating

316
00:22:00,360 --> 00:22:02,880
the carnival at the same time.

317
00:22:02,880 --> 00:22:07,960
The carnival was only revived in the 1970s,

318
00:22:07,960 --> 00:22:12,920
really for commercial reasons, it was to bring tourists into the city

319
00:22:12,920 --> 00:22:16,480
in February when normally it was a very low season.

320
00:22:16,480 --> 00:22:20,320
There is still quite a lot about it that we can recognise.

321
00:22:20,320 --> 00:22:23,320
There's a temporary structure over there in Piazza San Marco,

322
00:22:23,320 --> 00:22:29,080
just like the temporary structure in Guardi's painting. And, also a whole

323
00:22:29,080 --> 00:22:34,960
kind of atmosphere of dance and chaos and movement. You look at

324
00:22:34,960 --> 00:22:39,680
the acrobats and it looks as though they're just about to fall over.

325
00:22:39,680 --> 00:22:42,840
Although it is more commercial, you look around you

326
00:22:42,840 --> 00:22:46,920
and people are really having fun, people are wearing masks,

327
00:22:46,920 --> 00:22:51,000
people are really getting together and having a party.

328
00:22:51,000 --> 00:22:54,920
The joy, the sheer joy, despite the freezing cold,

329
00:22:54,920 --> 00:22:58,720
of being in Venice for an event like this, and I think in that

330
00:22:58,720 --> 00:23:03,000
respect there are really a lot of similarities

331
00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:07,440
between this painting and what we're seeing going on around us today.

332
00:23:12,840 --> 00:23:17,600
Venice became a political bargaining chip in Napoleon's European wars,

333
00:23:17,600 --> 00:23:20,040
and began a long period of decline.

334
00:23:22,520 --> 00:23:24,240
But centuries of indolence

335
00:23:24,240 --> 00:23:27,000
and extravagance had fitted her quite well for her new

336
00:23:27,000 --> 00:23:29,320
role as a tourist curiosity.

337
00:23:34,520 --> 00:23:39,040
Celebrating in winter didn't have to be such an ostentatious affair.

338
00:23:39,040 --> 00:23:41,640
The city of Edinburgh could certainly match Venice

339
00:23:41,640 --> 00:23:43,680
when it came to cold weather,

340
00:23:43,680 --> 00:23:47,280
but the new rational sensibilities of the Scottish Enlightenment

341
00:23:47,280 --> 00:23:50,280
led to more reserved ways to have fun in the cold.

342
00:23:53,520 --> 00:23:57,720
Since the union with England in 1707, Scotland had steadily

343
00:23:57,720 --> 00:24:01,200
increased in material prosperity, but it was in the fields

344
00:24:01,200 --> 00:24:05,680
of science and the arts that a new confidence was most evident.

345
00:24:05,680 --> 00:24:09,840
An English visitor famously claimed to be able to stand at the

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00:24:09,840 --> 00:24:15,160
cross in Edinburgh and take 50 men of genius and learning by the hand.

347
00:24:15,160 --> 00:24:18,720
Had he done so, it's a safe bet that many of them would have

348
00:24:18,720 --> 00:24:22,440
recently had their portrait painted by Sir Henry Raeburn.

349
00:24:24,320 --> 00:24:28,600
In the 1790s, amusing themselves away from their books,

350
00:24:28,600 --> 00:24:31,000
several of these men of learning established

351
00:24:31,000 --> 00:24:33,440
the Edinburgh Figure Skating Club,

352
00:24:33,440 --> 00:24:36,800
and met at The Sheep Heid Inn in Duddingston.

353
00:24:36,800 --> 00:24:40,560
In the depths of winter, when the cold weather froze the nearby loch,

354
00:24:40,560 --> 00:24:43,880
their leading light, the Reverend Robert Walker, took to the ice.

355
00:24:46,200 --> 00:24:50,240
I think the Reverend Walker's right in front of us, because there,

356
00:24:50,240 --> 00:24:52,760
going up the back of Arthur's Seat and then over to

357
00:24:52,760 --> 00:24:55,560
Duddingston village, you've got the gentle hills moving down.

358
00:24:55,560 --> 00:24:57,960
You can't see any of the houses of Duddingston village,

359
00:24:57,960 --> 00:25:01,520
but I think he was being observed by Raeburn

360
00:25:01,520 --> 00:25:03,560
roughly from where we are now.

361
00:25:03,560 --> 00:25:08,920
The sky is that icy, watery, grey-blue of a Scottish winter

362
00:25:08,920 --> 00:25:12,480
and I remember days like that, because as a child,

363
00:25:12,480 --> 00:25:15,880
we went skating on the lochs all the time so it must have been colder.

364
00:25:15,880 --> 00:25:18,600
Also, in Scotland, people were very stoic in the winter.

365
00:25:18,600 --> 00:25:20,960
Winters were long and hard and dark.

366
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:23,080
Look, here he is, making the most of it.

367
00:25:23,080 --> 00:25:25,840
If you look at the way Raeburn has done the cuts in the ice,

368
00:25:25,840 --> 00:25:30,240
there's lots of gliding movement, there's lots of circular movements,

369
00:25:30,240 --> 00:25:33,480
the Reverend Walker has been skating round for quite a while here.

370
00:25:33,480 --> 00:25:35,600
I don't think Raeburn painted this oil painting

371
00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:39,800
on the water, but he certainly took the sketches for it and he made sure

372
00:25:39,800 --> 00:25:42,760
that he showed that the Reverend Walker had to work for his portrait

373
00:25:42,760 --> 00:25:44,160
for quite a long time.

374
00:25:46,760 --> 00:25:49,720
Presbyterianism, the strict Protestant doctrine

375
00:25:49,720 --> 00:25:53,720
of the Church of Scotland, greatly approved of stoicism,

376
00:25:53,720 --> 00:25:58,120
but in many other respects it was an institution seemingly at odds

377
00:25:58,120 --> 00:26:03,000
with the rational and humanist ideals of the Enlightenment.

378
00:26:03,000 --> 00:26:06,120
Presbyterianism is regarded as being incredibly dour, but actually,

379
00:26:06,120 --> 00:26:11,360
this is not a pompous picture of a minister of the kirk saying,

380
00:26:11,360 --> 00:26:14,440
"Look at me, I can skate so beautifully on the loch,"

381
00:26:14,440 --> 00:26:17,440
"you know, I've been skating all my life." This is a minister who says,

382
00:26:17,440 --> 00:26:19,960
"Let's have a bit of fun." Look, he looks like a dandy.

383
00:26:19,960 --> 00:26:23,600
It's almost camp. He's got this beautiful frock-coat on,

384
00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:27,440
and his lovely hat and this white tied shirt at the neck,

385
00:26:27,440 --> 00:26:32,000
and he's got a slight smile on his face, which is what I love about it.

386
00:26:32,000 --> 00:26:34,160
A lot of the clergy were involved with the literati

387
00:26:34,160 --> 00:26:37,360
of the Scottish Enlightenment, and liked the conversation about science

388
00:26:37,360 --> 00:26:40,920
and the natural world, geology, geography.

389
00:26:40,920 --> 00:26:43,880
In Edinburgh, in this tiny area,

390
00:26:43,880 --> 00:26:47,720
you could just feel their brains sizzling.

391
00:26:47,720 --> 00:26:50,920
This is my favourite Scottish painting. This is my absolute

392
00:26:50,920 --> 00:26:55,080
favourite Scottish painting. This, to me, is what Scotland's all about.

393
00:26:58,160 --> 00:27:02,200
One of the great changes in the 18th century was homes have

394
00:27:02,200 --> 00:27:06,320
barometers in them, it's something that ordinary people start doing,

395
00:27:06,320 --> 00:27:10,480
is tapping their barometers to see whether today is changeable to fair.

396
00:27:10,480 --> 00:27:16,240
People have thermometers and so where Bruegel couldn't measure how

397
00:27:16,240 --> 00:27:21,440
cold his snowy scene was, it was only measurable in terms of what he

398
00:27:21,440 --> 00:27:27,280
felt on his skin. But for the 18th century artist,

399
00:27:27,280 --> 00:27:32,120
this is a very particular kind of cold. This is however many degrees

400
00:27:32,120 --> 00:27:35,920
below zero. So when we talk now about

401
00:27:35,920 --> 00:27:38,480
"the coldest winter since records began",

402
00:27:38,480 --> 00:27:42,760
we're really looking back to this time in the 18th century,

403
00:27:42,760 --> 00:27:45,880
when it occurred to people to start measuring.

404
00:27:48,360 --> 00:27:52,080
The casual grace of the Skating Minister, apparently immune

405
00:27:52,080 --> 00:27:55,840
to the bite of the Scottish winter, reflected a general lack of

406
00:27:55,840 --> 00:27:59,760
concern in these enlightened times for the threat from the weather.

407
00:28:01,960 --> 00:28:04,280
Protected in their modern houses in the terraces

408
00:28:04,280 --> 00:28:08,200
of Edinburgh's New Town, it seemed science and rational thought

409
00:28:08,200 --> 00:28:12,360
could solve all the problems that beset their superstitious ancestors.

410
00:28:14,720 --> 00:28:17,600
Winter was merely a natural consequence of the rotation

411
00:28:17,600 --> 00:28:21,200
of the Earth, and held no fear for men of learning.

412
00:28:24,600 --> 00:28:27,680
But the hubris of the Scottish Enlightenment's attitude to

413
00:28:27,680 --> 00:28:31,640
the weather was nothing compared to that of the newly appointed

414
00:28:31,640 --> 00:28:34,720
First Consul of France.

415
00:28:34,720 --> 00:28:37,680
Napoleon Bonaparte was confident he could conquer

416
00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:41,280
winter as a first step on his way to conquering the world.

417
00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:48,360
The Great St Bernard Pass, crossing the Alps between France

418
00:28:48,360 --> 00:28:51,800
and Northern Italy, was the scene of one of the most successful

419
00:28:51,800 --> 00:28:53,960
surprises in military history.

420
00:28:56,720 --> 00:29:01,360
Even today, the road through the pass is only open in the summer,

421
00:29:01,360 --> 00:29:05,560
but in the winter of 1800, Napoleon marched his army

422
00:29:05,560 --> 00:29:07,080
through these mountains.

423
00:29:16,520 --> 00:29:20,360
This extraordinary feat was painted by the French revolutionary

424
00:29:20,360 --> 00:29:23,800
enthusiast, Jacques-Louis David.

425
00:29:23,800 --> 00:29:28,080
His dramatic and inspirational portrait was designed to put

426
00:29:28,080 --> 00:29:31,920
Napoleon up there with the greatest generals of all time.

427
00:29:33,880 --> 00:29:36,680
In the pantheon of military greats there is a special place

428
00:29:36,680 --> 00:29:39,680
reserved for those who have campaigned in winter.

429
00:29:39,680 --> 00:29:41,320
It's the ultimate challenge.

430
00:29:42,600 --> 00:29:46,680
I mean, look at this painting, it's the apotheosis of heroic leadership.

431
00:29:46,680 --> 00:29:49,360
He looks calm, collected, the windswept hair,

432
00:29:49,360 --> 00:29:51,760
his mighty stallion rearing in the air,

433
00:29:51,760 --> 00:29:55,680
his finger pointed towards Italy and his enemies.

434
00:29:55,680 --> 00:29:59,240
This is the foundation myth of Napoleon as a warrior,

435
00:29:59,240 --> 00:30:00,640
leader of the French people.

436
00:30:02,560 --> 00:30:06,040
Napoleon's goal was the re-conquest of Northern Italy,

437
00:30:06,040 --> 00:30:09,520
and his enemies, the Austrians, were waiting for him in Genoa,

438
00:30:09,520 --> 00:30:14,000
confidently looking west along the coast for a French invasion.

439
00:30:14,000 --> 00:30:18,280
By taking a short cut across the Alps, Napoleon arrived unexpectedly

440
00:30:18,280 --> 00:30:22,160
at their rear and won a great victory at the Battle of Marengo.

441
00:30:24,200 --> 00:30:26,000
The most remarkable thing about this

442
00:30:26,000 --> 00:30:29,680
is that David never saw this pass, Napoleon never even sat

443
00:30:29,680 --> 00:30:33,120
for this portrait. He simply said he wished to be painted

444
00:30:33,120 --> 00:30:36,760
"Calme sur un cheval fougueux" -

445
00:30:36,760 --> 00:30:38,880
"Calm on a fiery steed."

446
00:30:38,880 --> 00:30:41,480
And that's exactly what David has done for him here.

447
00:30:43,160 --> 00:30:46,040
David was a believer, he was a political believer.

448
00:30:46,040 --> 00:30:48,240
He believed in the French Revolution,

449
00:30:48,240 --> 00:30:51,280
and I think when he painted this, he believed in Napoleon.

450
00:30:51,280 --> 00:30:54,920
This is a vision of Napoleon as more god than man.

451
00:30:55,960 --> 00:30:59,640
One thing about David, he's not a landscape artist.

452
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:02,600
He is only interested in the crossing of the Alps

453
00:31:02,600 --> 00:31:07,960
as metaphor, as a historical image, so nature was only there

454
00:31:07,960 --> 00:31:10,240
to set off the man.

455
00:31:10,240 --> 00:31:14,200
50 years later, when another Frenchman, Paul Delaroche,

456
00:31:14,200 --> 00:31:17,840
painted the same event, the metaphor was gone.

457
00:31:17,840 --> 00:31:21,400
The only thing his far more historically accurate picture

458
00:31:21,400 --> 00:31:25,520
had in common with David's version was Napoleon's hat.

459
00:31:25,520 --> 00:31:28,320
Delaroche produces a very, very different painting

460
00:31:28,320 --> 00:31:31,680
but one, in fact, that is just as heroic because it's a far

461
00:31:31,680 --> 00:31:34,720
more realistic impression of the incredible odds that Napoleon

462
00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:37,920
had to overcome in order to get his army across this pass.

463
00:31:37,920 --> 00:31:40,320
We see, not a mighty stallion,

464
00:31:40,320 --> 00:31:43,240
but a mule pressed into service from a local village.

465
00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:46,640
The men behind him had their hats couched down, trying to keep the wind

466
00:31:46,640 --> 00:31:50,600
from blowing them off. Napoleon's breeches are mud-spattered,

467
00:31:50,600 --> 00:31:54,320
he's wearing his campaigning greatcoat, huddled against the cold.

468
00:31:54,320 --> 00:31:57,160
And he has a guide here, a peasant guide, leading him.

469
00:31:57,160 --> 00:32:01,760
The mighty First Consul of France in the hands of a Swiss peasant.

470
00:32:01,760 --> 00:32:04,920
Whichever version you buy into, what both these paintings do is provide

471
00:32:04,920 --> 00:32:08,720
evidence of the enduring obsession with people for Napoleon Bonaparte.

472
00:32:08,720 --> 00:32:10,680
Very embarrassingly, as a teenaged boy

473
00:32:10,680 --> 00:32:13,280
I had this painting on the wall of my bedroom, just as I was

474
00:32:13,280 --> 00:32:16,280
developing a great love of military history. And whatever you thought

475
00:32:16,280 --> 00:32:21,160
about Napoleon Bonaparte as a man, as a general, as a force of nature,

476
00:32:21,160 --> 00:32:24,080
he's one of the most exceptional commanders who has ever lived.

477
00:32:28,840 --> 00:32:32,360
It seemed perfectly reasonable of the Austrians to have ignored

478
00:32:32,360 --> 00:32:35,200
the possibility that Napoleon would arrive this way.

479
00:32:35,200 --> 00:32:39,920
The challenge of taking an army over this pass was unimaginable.

480
00:32:39,920 --> 00:32:44,600
At nearly 10,000 feet, the thin air makes every footstep an effort.

481
00:32:46,840 --> 00:32:50,520
At the very top of the pass is the Hospice of St Bernard.

482
00:32:50,520 --> 00:32:54,960
They say there's no such thing as a free lunch but no-one told Napoleon.

483
00:32:57,200 --> 00:33:00,240
The religious community up here have been providing

484
00:33:00,240 --> 00:33:02,920
life-saving hospitality for centuries.

485
00:33:02,920 --> 00:33:05,600
But I doubt they ever had a more demanding guest

486
00:33:05,600 --> 00:33:07,200
than Napoleon Bonaparte.

487
00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:10,040
Napoleon was famous for saying an army would march on its stomach,

488
00:33:10,040 --> 00:33:11,800
he was a famous logistician.

489
00:33:11,800 --> 00:33:15,640
And while they were here, the consumed 22,000 bottles of wine,

490
00:33:15,640 --> 00:33:19,960
a tonne and a half of cheese, and nearly a tonne of meat.

491
00:33:19,960 --> 00:33:22,720
He was also famous for being quite rapacious.

492
00:33:22,720 --> 00:33:25,720
He didn't tend to pay the bills that much and he certainly never paid the

493
00:33:25,720 --> 00:33:28,520
bill up here. But eventually, the monks got their own back.

494
00:33:28,520 --> 00:33:31,880
Francois Mitterrand, president of France, visited this wonderful

495
00:33:31,880 --> 00:33:36,280
monastery in the 1980s, and he finally, after about 200 years,

496
00:33:36,280 --> 00:33:37,440
paid the bill.

497
00:33:41,960 --> 00:33:45,560
Napoleon's achievement continued to inspire painters,

498
00:33:45,560 --> 00:33:49,480
becoming even more celebrated in the late 19th century.

499
00:33:49,480 --> 00:33:54,040
Outside, in front of the hospice, Edouard Castres painted this

500
00:33:54,040 --> 00:33:56,800
scene of the passage of Napoleon's soldiers.

501
00:33:58,880 --> 00:34:01,160
I'm looking down on Italy.

502
00:34:01,160 --> 00:34:04,240
And behind me, several hundred miles, is Paris.

503
00:34:04,240 --> 00:34:07,600
If you draw a line from Paris where Napoleon was to the Austrian

504
00:34:07,600 --> 00:34:10,480
army in Northern Italy, you come through here.

505
00:34:10,480 --> 00:34:13,000
Standing up here on the top of the world, he must have thought

506
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:16,400
he had winter licked. He was a commander like no other.

507
00:34:16,400 --> 00:34:21,280
But 12 years later, it turned out he was a mere mortal, after all.

508
00:34:21,280 --> 00:34:23,600
He invaded Russia without the necessary supplies

509
00:34:23,600 --> 00:34:28,040
and winter clothing, and half a million of his men died.

510
00:34:28,040 --> 00:34:30,720
In the end, winter got its own back.

511
00:34:32,800 --> 00:34:36,200
In the years following his remarkable feat in this pass,

512
00:34:36,200 --> 00:34:40,320
Napoleon seemed invincible, a situation that led to a great deal

513
00:34:40,320 --> 00:34:42,920
of soul-searching in the nations he defeated.

514
00:34:44,440 --> 00:34:48,200
In Dresden, the work of the Romantic landscape painter,

515
00:34:48,200 --> 00:34:52,720
Caspar David Friedrich, reflected this brooding, sombre mood.

516
00:34:56,080 --> 00:35:00,600
Caspar Friedrich is born at a very interesting time in German history.

517
00:35:00,600 --> 00:35:05,040
On October 14th, 1806, Napoleon had crushed the

518
00:35:05,040 --> 00:35:08,400
Prussian army at Jena Auerstedt, and the Prussian army was

519
00:35:08,400 --> 00:35:11,680
considered the greatest professional army, at the time, in Europe.

520
00:35:11,680 --> 00:35:16,720
So this caused a real crisis in the way Germans and the German nations

521
00:35:16,720 --> 00:35:18,240
thought about themselves.

522
00:35:18,240 --> 00:35:21,440
They'd been defeated in the war and they really felt, well,

523
00:35:21,440 --> 00:35:23,360
"Who and what are we, where are we going,

524
00:35:23,360 --> 00:35:25,280
"we've got to reconstruct ourselves."

525
00:35:26,560 --> 00:35:31,840
What they find in this dark wounded space, is the Gothic sensibility.

526
00:35:31,840 --> 00:35:34,360
You might find vampires, you might find ruins,

527
00:35:34,360 --> 00:35:39,760
graveyards, areas which, represent melancholy, represent the sublime,

528
00:35:39,760 --> 00:35:43,040
represent terror, represent fear, represent anxiety.

529
00:35:43,040 --> 00:35:46,680
These are the areas that are really becoming more interesting to romantic

530
00:35:46,680 --> 00:35:48,600
writers and painters.

531
00:35:50,320 --> 00:35:53,080
The picture itself is a fairly grim image.

532
00:35:53,080 --> 00:35:56,600
Winter is obviously very bleak, everything's dead.

533
00:35:56,600 --> 00:36:00,480
We have in the forefront the snow-covered ground,

534
00:36:00,480 --> 00:36:05,080
a landscape of monks, of burial, and out of that comes these,

535
00:36:05,080 --> 00:36:08,880
almost fingers, or skeletal trees, grasping at the light which is

536
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:11,200
coming from the sky.

537
00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:14,800
And at the top you see this little circle of the moon,

538
00:36:14,800 --> 00:36:18,920
which is suggestive of the redemptive force of Christianity.

539
00:36:21,360 --> 00:36:27,240
The Christian message of Friedrich's picture is not immediately evident.

540
00:36:27,240 --> 00:36:32,000
The ruined gothic tracery and bleak winter setting offer little comfort

541
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:36,840
to a believer, but Friedrich's northern European Protestant faith

542
00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:41,320
led him to explore new ways to paint the experience of divinity in a

543
00:36:41,320 --> 00:36:42,560
secular world.

544
00:36:45,880 --> 00:36:48,320
I think it is radical, I think it would have been really

545
00:36:48,320 --> 00:36:50,000
startling for people looking at this

546
00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:52,120
at the beginning of the 19th century.

547
00:36:52,120 --> 00:36:54,720
We look at it and I suppose we see Gothic horror,

548
00:36:54,720 --> 00:36:57,120
and tropes of horror films and Twilight, perhaps,

549
00:36:57,120 --> 00:36:59,880
but for them it was something that was new.

550
00:36:59,880 --> 00:37:03,800
If you look at Christian art in the Catholic period

551
00:37:03,800 --> 00:37:07,000
it's full of stories and people and stuff.

552
00:37:07,000 --> 00:37:10,480
What he's doing as a good Lutheran is trying to look in nature,

553
00:37:10,480 --> 00:37:13,600
and finding evidence of the sublime, evidence of God, by looking

554
00:37:13,600 --> 00:37:16,720
into the book of nature, as Calvin would have put it,

555
00:37:16,720 --> 00:37:18,800
and reading in the book of nature,

556
00:37:18,800 --> 00:37:21,160
evidence of the presence and the purposes of God,

557
00:37:21,160 --> 00:37:24,040
and that would have been a new thing.

558
00:37:24,040 --> 00:37:26,720
Friedrich uses the power of nature

559
00:37:26,720 --> 00:37:28,560
to heighten the drama of his picture.

560
00:37:30,400 --> 00:37:34,800
In winter, in the face of this barren, unforgiving scene,

561
00:37:34,800 --> 00:37:38,720
we feel the need for solace more than ever.

562
00:37:38,720 --> 00:37:42,040
I mean, to a Christian, God in winter comes as no surprise because

563
00:37:42,040 --> 00:37:44,760
the incarnation, the birth of Jesus is

564
00:37:44,760 --> 00:37:48,040
something that happens not, you know, in bright sunshine

565
00:37:48,040 --> 00:37:51,600
and not in a fanfare and blaze of glory but somewhere very unexpected,

566
00:37:51,600 --> 00:37:55,520
the back of beyond, in the darkness of night, in winter, and the birth

567
00:37:55,520 --> 00:37:59,040
of a baby, in a manger. That's become so familiar to us

568
00:37:59,040 --> 00:38:02,360
we forget sometimes how surprising it is, but I think there's something

569
00:38:02,360 --> 00:38:05,240
about surprise, the sheer, counterintuitiveness of it,

570
00:38:05,240 --> 00:38:07,360
that Friedrich tries to capture.

571
00:38:07,360 --> 00:38:11,080
At the heart of Christianity, is Christ crucified, abandoned on the

572
00:38:11,080 --> 00:38:15,280
cross, who cries out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

573
00:38:15,280 --> 00:38:18,120
which is a cry which the world would seem to take up in the dead of

574
00:38:18,120 --> 00:38:21,880
winter, when the earth stands hard as iron and it's cold and it's

575
00:38:21,880 --> 00:38:25,080
wretched and it's miserable, and that's that sense in Friedrich.

576
00:38:25,080 --> 00:38:28,120
He doesn't underestimate that at all, he doesn't gloss

577
00:38:28,120 --> 00:38:30,720
the darkness and the fierceness and the cold,

578
00:38:30,720 --> 00:38:34,720
but he never loses grip on the hope that's implicit in it, too.

579
00:38:34,720 --> 00:38:36,440
It's very subtle.

580
00:38:38,160 --> 00:38:42,400
The subtlety of Friedrich's Gothic imagination would ultimately see his

581
00:38:42,400 --> 00:38:46,720
powerful imagery become the stock in trade of the horror movie, but his

582
00:38:46,720 --> 00:38:48,800
popularity has been very variable.

583
00:38:50,880 --> 00:38:54,040
Though this painting had been bought by the King of Prussia,

584
00:38:54,040 --> 00:38:56,840
by the time of his death he was largely forgotten.

585
00:38:57,760 --> 00:39:00,440
Friedrich was revived in the early 20th century,

586
00:39:00,440 --> 00:39:04,400
specifically by German Expressionist filmmakers who directly take their

587
00:39:04,400 --> 00:39:08,320
ideas from Friedrich. Now this is interesting because Friedrich's

588
00:39:08,320 --> 00:39:11,800
painting, of course, comes straight after a terrible German defeat,

589
00:39:11,800 --> 00:39:15,840
by Napoleon, and in the same way, this same anxiety,

590
00:39:15,840 --> 00:39:19,720
this same introspection comes straight after the First World War,

591
00:39:19,720 --> 00:39:22,520
with the rise of German Expressionist cinema.

592
00:39:22,520 --> 00:39:25,240
We see this in films like Dr Caligari,

593
00:39:25,240 --> 00:39:27,280
which deals specifically with mental illness,

594
00:39:27,280 --> 00:39:30,320
and with Nosferatu which deals with the invasion of a

595
00:39:30,320 --> 00:39:34,520
foreign, plague-ridden vampire, into the midst of a German town.

596
00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:40,160
The cinematic drama of Friedrich's dark winter landscapes was a sombre

597
00:39:40,160 --> 00:39:44,080
Germanic response to the Napoleonic Wars, but for his restless British

598
00:39:44,080 --> 00:39:46,640
contemporary, Joseph Turner,

599
00:39:46,640 --> 00:39:49,960
the fighting was merely an irritating inconvenience that

600
00:39:49,960 --> 00:39:52,800
prevented him from travelling to the continent.

601
00:39:53,960 --> 00:39:58,240
In 1802 he managed a brief visit to Switzerland during a lull in the

602
00:39:58,240 --> 00:40:02,200
conflict, but he was still using the sketches as inspiration eight years

603
00:40:02,200 --> 00:40:07,040
later when he painted this view of an avalanche in the Alps.

604
00:40:07,040 --> 00:40:10,960
He's a painter's painter, you could say that Caspar David Friedrich,

605
00:40:10,960 --> 00:40:14,480
his great German contemporary, is a photographer's painter,

606
00:40:14,480 --> 00:40:17,800
he has a kind of stillness which appeals very much now.

607
00:40:17,800 --> 00:40:21,760
But Turner is about what painting can do, what oil paint can do.

608
00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:25,520
This is paint making a world and then smashing that world

609
00:40:25,520 --> 00:40:27,240
and then stirring it about

610
00:40:27,240 --> 00:40:29,680
and then loving the results.

611
00:40:29,680 --> 00:40:33,120
Winter, avalanche, snow, blizzards,

612
00:40:33,120 --> 00:40:38,880
these massive forces give Turner the opportunity to depict abstract

613
00:40:38,880 --> 00:40:43,200
energy and colour. If you wanted to depict the kind of abstract

614
00:40:43,200 --> 00:40:50,080
mystery of blinding whiteness, snow was the opportunity to do so.

615
00:40:50,080 --> 00:40:54,560
Bruegel saw that in the 16th century, and Turner sees it again.

616
00:40:54,560 --> 00:40:58,200
Snow for him is an opportunity to blast apart

617
00:40:58,200 --> 00:41:01,200
the conventions of realism.

618
00:41:02,520 --> 00:41:05,880
The British liked their conventions though,

619
00:41:05,880 --> 00:41:09,120
and took some persuading to see mountains in a new light.

620
00:41:10,720 --> 00:41:14,560
The Alps were generally regarded as something rather unpleasant

621
00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:18,080
and dangerous, to hurry through on your way to more congenial pleasures

622
00:41:18,080 --> 00:41:19,600
further south.

623
00:41:19,600 --> 00:41:23,000
The philosopher, Bishop Berkeley, put up the shutters on his coach

624
00:41:23,000 --> 00:41:26,080
with a shudder as they hove into view.

625
00:41:27,440 --> 00:41:31,640
Turner, the son of a London barber who grew up in Covent Garden,

626
00:41:31,640 --> 00:41:35,080
was struck dumb by their majesty,

627
00:41:35,080 --> 00:41:39,040
but their effect on his great friend and champion, John Ruskin, was akin

628
00:41:39,040 --> 00:41:41,920
to a divine revelation

629
00:41:41,920 --> 00:41:45,560
and it was his love of mountains that would bring about a profound

630
00:41:45,560 --> 00:41:50,240
change in our attitude to the whole idea of what winter was good for.

631
00:41:52,240 --> 00:41:54,520
Ruskin was first brought here by his parents

632
00:41:54,520 --> 00:41:56,520
when he was about 14 years old, in 1833,

633
00:41:56,520 --> 00:41:59,840
and, the experience, it's only fair to say, was religious.

634
00:41:59,840 --> 00:42:02,520
He felt that seeing something this beautiful,

635
00:42:02,520 --> 00:42:05,680
this astonishing, was absolute proof positive,

636
00:42:05,680 --> 00:42:07,800
that there was a benevolent God.

637
00:42:07,800 --> 00:42:11,800
Ruskin we remember as an art critic, but long before he became interested

638
00:42:11,800 --> 00:42:14,560
in painting he was fascinated by geology. Had he not become an art

639
00:42:14,560 --> 00:42:17,520
critic he would probably have become England's greatest geologist.

640
00:42:17,520 --> 00:42:20,360
Long before the problems that are raised by Darwin with biological

641
00:42:20,360 --> 00:42:23,000
difficulties with Genesis,

642
00:42:23,000 --> 00:42:26,840
in fact, geology was the science which really started to inflict the

643
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:29,960
wounds much earlier than Darwin. And Ruskin says that every time he

644
00:42:29,960 --> 00:42:34,080
reads his Bible nowadays, he hears the chink of the geologist's hammers

645
00:42:34,080 --> 00:42:37,080
at the end of every cadence, and it's as though there's a literal

646
00:42:37,080 --> 00:42:40,360
undermining of his faith by these people with their little pickaxes.

647
00:42:40,360 --> 00:42:43,720
So geology at once leads him to God and leads him away from God.

648
00:42:43,720 --> 00:42:46,520
It's a really fascinating paradox.

649
00:42:47,880 --> 00:42:51,360
Above the town of Chamonix, on the slopes of Mont Blanc,

650
00:42:51,360 --> 00:42:55,800
Ruskin recorded the progress of the Mer de Glace glacier.

651
00:42:57,320 --> 00:42:59,760
It's really amazing to look at this

652
00:42:59,760 --> 00:43:02,680
because Ruskin, though he didn't give himself any great airs

653
00:43:02,680 --> 00:43:04,600
as an artist, was very precise and if you

654
00:43:04,600 --> 00:43:08,560
look at the upper part of this engraving, you see the skyline is

655
00:43:08,560 --> 00:43:12,800
absolutely identical, every little chip, every little spur, every

656
00:43:12,800 --> 00:43:15,480
little needle, exactly the same.

657
00:43:15,480 --> 00:43:18,680
But then if you come down and look at the lower half of the picture,

658
00:43:18,680 --> 00:43:23,560
it's completely changed, it's dropped 150 metres.

659
00:43:24,920 --> 00:43:27,800
While Ruskin the artist painted the valley,

660
00:43:27,800 --> 00:43:31,120
Ruskin the scientist, an early enthusiast for the new medium of

661
00:43:31,120 --> 00:43:36,040
photography, made this Daguerreotype image of the scene.

662
00:43:36,040 --> 00:43:39,320
But for the local population, whichever way you looked at it,

663
00:43:39,320 --> 00:43:43,000
the glacier was a malevolent thing.

664
00:43:43,000 --> 00:43:46,560
We tend to think about glaciers as being relatively static,

665
00:43:46,560 --> 00:43:50,160
relatively immobile, but in fact,

666
00:43:50,160 --> 00:43:55,840
this particular gigantic flow of ice one year advanced by as much as

667
00:43:55,840 --> 00:43:59,880
450 metres, eating into local farmlands, destroying local livelihoods.

668
00:43:59,880 --> 00:44:02,120
There was a cartoon done at the time of the

669
00:44:02,120 --> 00:44:06,320
glacier as a kind of voracious white dragon, eating its way down through

670
00:44:06,320 --> 00:44:09,040
the hills with its wings spread out behind it, wings of snow.

671
00:44:09,040 --> 00:44:12,240
Ruskin would have loved that, for him dragons encapsulate everything that

672
00:44:12,240 --> 00:44:14,200
was evil, and in fact this whole

673
00:44:14,200 --> 00:44:17,880
area used to be known as the cursed mountain, the Mont Maudit.

674
00:44:17,880 --> 00:44:21,040
Bishops used to have to come and sprinkle holy water over it to

675
00:44:21,040 --> 00:44:23,320
diffuse the evil spirits.

676
00:44:23,320 --> 00:44:27,320
So, by loving this place so much, by saying that it's actually not a

677
00:44:27,320 --> 00:44:30,400
place of evil but a place of beauty, Ruskin was really going against a

678
00:44:30,400 --> 00:44:33,000
very substantial folk tradition in the area.

679
00:44:36,280 --> 00:44:39,320
The farmers of Chamonix were never going to love the glacier as Ruskin

680
00:44:39,320 --> 00:44:43,400
did, but he won an increasingly adoring following

681
00:44:43,400 --> 00:44:45,200
back home in Britain.

682
00:44:45,200 --> 00:44:48,200
His passion for this landscape was so infectious that,

683
00:44:48,200 --> 00:44:52,520
almost single-handedly, he started the fashion for winter tourism.

684
00:44:57,080 --> 00:44:59,920
Ruskin has to be held culpable for developments

685
00:44:59,920 --> 00:45:02,440
that would have made him weep.

686
00:45:02,440 --> 00:45:05,640
With all due respect to the people who come here for their vacations,

687
00:45:05,640 --> 00:45:08,320
that's fine, but had Ruskin seen the ski lifts, had he seen the

688
00:45:08,320 --> 00:45:11,320
cafes, had he seen all the attendant paraphernalia,

689
00:45:11,320 --> 00:45:13,800
I'm afraid he would have broken into tears.

690
00:45:15,520 --> 00:45:21,320
Another of Ruskin's favourite views is on the other side of the valley.

691
00:45:21,320 --> 00:45:24,640
Today the ski lift cuts short what, for Ruskin,

692
00:45:24,640 --> 00:45:28,280
would have been a quite considerable expedition,

693
00:45:28,280 --> 00:45:31,040
climbing several thousand feet above the town.

694
00:45:39,000 --> 00:45:41,640
This view across Chamonix to what used to be called

695
00:45:41,640 --> 00:45:44,160
the Waterfall of Madness, Cascade de la Folie,

696
00:45:44,160 --> 00:45:46,320
was a scene he was particularly fond of.

697
00:45:46,320 --> 00:45:49,440
It's a very fine piece of work and of course it's charged with Ruskin's

698
00:45:49,440 --> 00:45:51,320
notion that this is as close as you

699
00:45:51,320 --> 00:45:54,280
can get, almost literally, to paradise on earth.

700
00:45:54,280 --> 00:45:57,600
Ruskin is a late romantic, which is one way of saying that he learned to

701
00:45:57,600 --> 00:46:00,760
find beautiful things that previous generations had found completely

702
00:46:00,760 --> 00:46:02,200
ugly, snow for example.

703
00:46:02,200 --> 00:46:04,480
In some ways his love of snow is an extension of

704
00:46:04,480 --> 00:46:07,360
his love of geology, in general, and of precious

705
00:46:07,360 --> 00:46:09,440
stones in particular.

706
00:46:09,440 --> 00:46:12,920
It's as though the mountainsides around us were simply cascaded with

707
00:46:12,920 --> 00:46:15,800
beautiful white jewellery, but, of course, no-one

708
00:46:15,800 --> 00:46:18,000
before Ruskin would have seen it that way.

709
00:46:18,000 --> 00:46:21,400
This was all completely new to people as an aesthetic idea,

710
00:46:21,400 --> 00:46:24,600
but Ruskin was so trusted that they followed his example, I mean, it's

711
00:46:24,600 --> 00:46:28,720
almost impossible to exaggerate quite how much faith the broad,

712
00:46:28,720 --> 00:46:31,840
Victorian-educated public put in Ruskin, he has almost no

713
00:46:31,840 --> 00:46:35,520
counterpart in the modern world, you have to combine David Attenborough

714
00:46:35,520 --> 00:46:39,840
with Terence Conran with Jamie Oliver, or whatever. None of those

715
00:46:39,840 --> 00:46:44,200
even, none of those people singly, none of them put together, had quite

716
00:46:44,200 --> 00:46:47,760
the sway over the British public and were held in quite such affection

717
00:46:47,760 --> 00:46:49,320
and respect.

718
00:46:50,320 --> 00:46:54,840
Like Bruegel, Ruskin used his art to completely change the way people

719
00:46:54,840 --> 00:46:56,640
thought about winter. The precision

720
00:46:56,640 --> 00:47:01,920
of his draughtsmanship tamed the Alps and made them seem accessible.

721
00:47:01,920 --> 00:47:04,040
He established the idea that winter

722
00:47:04,040 --> 00:47:06,680
was something you could visit for a holiday.

723
00:47:08,120 --> 00:47:10,840
But his obsessive pursuit of accuracy was about to be turned on

724
00:47:10,840 --> 00:47:14,520
its head by a group of young Frenchmen who admired Turner as much

725
00:47:14,520 --> 00:47:18,000
as he did - but for all the wrong reasons.

726
00:47:21,560 --> 00:47:25,320
In their own way, the Impressionists were just as keen on accuracy,

727
00:47:25,320 --> 00:47:28,560
and were obsessive about something they called "snow effect,"

728
00:47:28,560 --> 00:47:32,320
the elusive colour of the shadows in a snowy landscape.

729
00:47:33,560 --> 00:47:42,040
This is Monet's first stab at snow effect, painted in Honfleur in 1867.

730
00:47:42,040 --> 00:47:46,080
As paintings, I personally think Monet's snow scenes, are the best

731
00:47:46,080 --> 00:47:49,760
since Bruegel. He's a painter of light, he's a painter of

732
00:47:49,760 --> 00:47:55,920
transitory effects, impressions, he's not interested in, sort of,

733
00:47:55,920 --> 00:47:58,960
underlying realities of things, he's interested in what it looks like

734
00:47:58,960 --> 00:48:01,440
right now, right now before my eyes as it changes.

735
00:48:01,440 --> 00:48:05,960
And it's that sense of the passing world, the effect of light on snow,

736
00:48:05,960 --> 00:48:10,440
these incredibly light, sensitive, graceful capturings of passing

737
00:48:10,440 --> 00:48:14,040
moments, this is what Monet's about.

738
00:48:14,040 --> 00:48:17,560
The notoriety of the early Impressionist exhibitions did not

739
00:48:17,560 --> 00:48:22,480
immediately lead to financial security for Monet. In 1878, poverty

740
00:48:22,480 --> 00:48:27,520
forced him to move to a rented house, shared with another family,

741
00:48:27,520 --> 00:48:30,840
in the village of Vetheuil, on the banks of the Seine,

742
00:48:30,840 --> 00:48:33,320
40 miles from Paris.

743
00:48:33,320 --> 00:48:37,280
Soon after the family moved to the village, Monet's wife Camille became

744
00:48:37,280 --> 00:48:41,880
seriously ill and, after the birth of their second child,

745
00:48:41,880 --> 00:48:44,320
her condition deteriorated.

746
00:48:44,320 --> 00:48:49,520
He was often forced to choose between paint or medicine for his wife.

747
00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:51,120
In a letter he said,

748
00:48:51,120 --> 00:48:55,240
"I haven't been able to work for a month now, lacking all colours."

749
00:48:57,080 --> 00:49:00,440
When you know what Monet was going through, in his life at the time,

750
00:49:00,440 --> 00:49:03,880
it makes you feel really differently about this painting. Monet is in the

751
00:49:03,880 --> 00:49:09,560
winter of his life, so it's fairly apt that it's so snowy.

752
00:49:09,560 --> 00:49:12,960
It's that bit where snow has gone from being really beautiful

753
00:49:12,960 --> 00:49:15,280
to being just like junky and dirty.

754
00:49:15,280 --> 00:49:19,160
It's not pristine snow, it's not about smoothness and purity,

755
00:49:19,160 --> 00:49:22,880
and everything looking peaceful, it's sort of out of

756
00:49:22,880 --> 00:49:24,880
control a little bit.

757
00:49:24,880 --> 00:49:27,800
I suppose that's probably how he felt at the time, out of control.

758
00:49:27,800 --> 00:49:29,720
What you can see here, are people.

759
00:49:29,720 --> 00:49:33,680
You don't see it at first because they're almost completely engulfed

760
00:49:33,680 --> 00:49:37,520
in the landscape, they're more like ghosts.

761
00:49:37,520 --> 00:49:40,760
And I think that's, incredibly poignant, as what's about

762
00:49:40,760 --> 00:49:44,720
to happen is that he will lose Camille. And she'll become a ghost.

763
00:49:51,360 --> 00:49:55,400
Camille died in September 1879.

764
00:49:55,400 --> 00:49:59,080
Some 40 years later, Monet described to a friend

765
00:49:59,080 --> 00:50:01,320
the thoughts that went through his mind

766
00:50:01,320 --> 00:50:04,360
as he sat next to their bed, looking at her corpse.

767
00:50:05,640 --> 00:50:08,720
"I caught myself in the act of mechanically analysing

768
00:50:08,720 --> 00:50:11,600
"the succession of appropriate colour gradations

769
00:50:11,600 --> 00:50:15,280
"which death was imposing on her immobile face.

770
00:50:15,280 --> 00:50:18,640
"Tones of blue, of yellow, of grey.

771
00:50:18,640 --> 00:50:21,880
"Even before I had the idea of setting down the features

772
00:50:21,880 --> 00:50:24,440
"to which I was so deeply attached,

773
00:50:24,440 --> 00:50:28,160
"my organism automatically reacted to the colour stimuli,

774
00:50:28,160 --> 00:50:32,200
"and my reflexes caught me up in spite of myself,

775
00:50:32,200 --> 00:50:36,320
"in an unconscious operation which was the daily course of my life."

776
00:50:38,320 --> 00:50:41,960
In this painting, she seems to be cocooned in ice.

777
00:50:43,120 --> 00:50:47,040
'This is such a tragic picture of Camille.'

778
00:50:47,040 --> 00:50:50,360
It might seem macabre that he was painting her on her deathbed,

779
00:50:50,360 --> 00:50:54,280
but, actually, it's completely what you have to do,

780
00:50:54,280 --> 00:50:55,400
what HE had to do.

781
00:50:55,400 --> 00:51:01,120
This compulsion to cherish her, and treasure her

782
00:51:01,120 --> 00:51:03,640
and, I guess, to not lose her completely.

783
00:51:03,640 --> 00:51:07,280
Trying to capture her in the brushstrokes, and stroking her.

784
00:51:07,280 --> 00:51:12,640
Because every single mark, is, that brush and that's a caress.

785
00:51:12,640 --> 00:51:17,720
And it's this kind of terrible, painful moment

786
00:51:17,720 --> 00:51:20,360
and the only way that he could have got through it is painting.

787
00:51:22,640 --> 00:51:26,760
Camille's death was followed by a brutally severe winter.

788
00:51:26,760 --> 00:51:28,160
On the 10th of December,

789
00:51:28,160 --> 00:51:33,360
the temperature reached a record low of -25 degrees.

790
00:51:33,360 --> 00:51:36,120
The Seine froze over completely.

791
00:51:36,120 --> 00:51:38,680
But by the thaw, Monet had managed to sell

792
00:51:38,680 --> 00:51:41,280
some of his winter landscapes of the village,

793
00:51:41,280 --> 00:51:43,960
and was busy painting the vast blocks of ice

794
00:51:43,960 --> 00:51:47,200
as they broke up and drifted downstream.

795
00:51:47,200 --> 00:51:51,880
His time in Vetheuil was to prove the turning point in Monet's life.

796
00:51:51,880 --> 00:51:54,560
He gained confidence, raised his prices,

797
00:51:54,560 --> 00:51:56,560
and his career began to prosper.

798
00:51:59,360 --> 00:52:02,200
Financial success for the French Impressionists

799
00:52:02,200 --> 00:52:06,440
was cemented by an exhibition that took place in 1886,

800
00:52:06,440 --> 00:52:09,640
and featured over 40 of Monet's paintings,

801
00:52:09,640 --> 00:52:12,440
but it didn't happen in Paris or London.

802
00:52:12,440 --> 00:52:13,840
It happened in New York.

803
00:52:15,200 --> 00:52:18,280
After suffering years of critical scorn at home,

804
00:52:18,280 --> 00:52:20,600
the Impressionists were immensely successful

805
00:52:20,600 --> 00:52:23,000
on the other side of the Atlantic.

806
00:52:23,000 --> 00:52:25,840
Monet's dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, said,

807
00:52:25,840 --> 00:52:29,480
"The American public does not laugh. It buys."

808
00:52:33,240 --> 00:52:35,160
In a great cultural exchange,

809
00:52:35,160 --> 00:52:37,880
many American painters travelled to Paris

810
00:52:37,880 --> 00:52:40,560
to learn about Impressionism first-hand.

811
00:52:40,560 --> 00:52:42,760
Amongst them was the man who was to become

812
00:52:42,760 --> 00:52:44,760
the pre-eminent American Impressionist,

813
00:52:44,760 --> 00:52:45,960
Childe Hassam.

814
00:52:49,720 --> 00:52:51,960
"The man who will go down to posterity

815
00:52:51,960 --> 00:52:54,400
"is the man who paints his own time

816
00:52:54,400 --> 00:52:56,640
"and the scenes of everyday life around him,"

817
00:52:56,640 --> 00:53:00,560
said Hassam, and there was certainly lots going on to paint.

818
00:53:01,760 --> 00:53:04,040
New York was just beginning to emerge

819
00:53:04,040 --> 00:53:06,120
as one of the world's great cities

820
00:53:06,120 --> 00:53:09,840
with its own distinct style and culture,

821
00:53:09,840 --> 00:53:13,320
and needed its own artists to recognise its changing status.

822
00:53:14,720 --> 00:53:18,720
Hassam loved snow and painted it wherever he was.

823
00:53:18,720 --> 00:53:21,160
He made this picture in his native Boston.

824
00:53:22,760 --> 00:53:25,640
Like Monet, Hassam wanted to paint the elements

825
00:53:25,640 --> 00:53:28,320
as he saw them in front of him at that moment,

826
00:53:28,320 --> 00:53:31,400
and was equally fascinated by the winter light,

827
00:53:31,400 --> 00:53:34,880
but his most enduring images of winter are of New York.

828
00:53:39,600 --> 00:53:44,080
This picture shows horse-drawn cabs struggling down Fifth Avenue.

829
00:53:44,080 --> 00:53:46,400
For Hassam, capturing winter in New York

830
00:53:46,400 --> 00:53:49,320
wasn't a question of getting out in the sunshine

831
00:53:49,320 --> 00:53:52,160
and exploring the snow effect in the shadows.

832
00:53:52,160 --> 00:53:54,760
He wanted to paint the blur of driving snow

833
00:53:54,760 --> 00:53:56,360
in the teeth of the storm.

834
00:53:59,160 --> 00:54:02,120
During that same winter, on the same street,

835
00:54:02,120 --> 00:54:03,920
a similar scene was created

836
00:54:03,920 --> 00:54:06,800
by another man who saw himself as an artist,

837
00:54:06,800 --> 00:54:08,520
but he was using a camera.

838
00:54:13,240 --> 00:54:14,600
This image is probably

839
00:54:14,600 --> 00:54:18,080
the world's first successful photograph of falling snow.

840
00:54:22,600 --> 00:54:25,040
Alfred Stieglitz was born in New York

841
00:54:25,040 --> 00:54:27,640
but spent ten years as a young man in Europe.

842
00:54:27,640 --> 00:54:30,400
When he returned to his native Manhattan,

843
00:54:30,400 --> 00:54:33,480
he was fired with enthusiasm for photography,

844
00:54:33,480 --> 00:54:35,960
convinced it was the art form of the future.

845
00:54:38,760 --> 00:54:42,720
At a time when serious photography required a bulky plate camera,

846
00:54:42,720 --> 00:54:46,240
Stieglitz purchased a smaller 4x5 inch model

847
00:54:46,240 --> 00:54:50,280
and began to photograph life on the streets of New York.

848
00:54:50,280 --> 00:54:54,200
His return to the city coincided with a run of terrible winters,

849
00:54:54,200 --> 00:54:56,840
and many of his most famous pictures

850
00:54:56,840 --> 00:54:59,480
are scenes of Manhattan in the snow,

851
00:54:59,480 --> 00:55:03,360
like this photograph, The Terminal.

852
00:55:03,360 --> 00:55:05,400
'Winter in New York is brutal.

853
00:55:05,400 --> 00:55:07,200
'It is absolutely brutal.'

854
00:55:07,200 --> 00:55:09,560
But what really happens in New York

855
00:55:09,560 --> 00:55:11,760
in the winter is life slows down,

856
00:55:11,760 --> 00:55:15,200
people stay inside as much as possible.

857
00:55:15,200 --> 00:55:17,760
So I imagine that Stieglitz had...

858
00:55:17,760 --> 00:55:21,440
I imagine he had a lot of fun walking around the city

859
00:55:21,440 --> 00:55:23,960
and kind of seeing it laid bare a little bit more,

860
00:55:23,960 --> 00:55:25,440
just like leaves fall off trees

861
00:55:25,440 --> 00:55:27,520
and you get to see the skeletons of the trees,

862
00:55:27,520 --> 00:55:30,120
you get to see kind of the inner workings of the city

863
00:55:30,120 --> 00:55:32,800
a little bit more, because there's less life on the street.

864
00:55:32,800 --> 00:55:36,000
In this picture you can see the curve of the tracks

865
00:55:36,000 --> 00:55:37,880
where the streetcars made their turn

866
00:55:37,880 --> 00:55:39,800
before going back north up to Harlem,

867
00:55:39,800 --> 00:55:42,320
and actually, this bus right behind me

868
00:55:42,320 --> 00:55:45,200
is following almost exactly that same curve,

869
00:55:45,200 --> 00:55:47,440
as it too turns around to go north.

870
00:55:47,440 --> 00:55:49,880
This picture is a window into the past.

871
00:55:49,880 --> 00:55:51,640
It's a glimpse into New York

872
00:55:51,640 --> 00:55:54,320
at a moment when it was changing incredibly rapidly.

873
00:55:54,320 --> 00:55:56,920
The 1890s was really the period

874
00:55:56,920 --> 00:56:01,920
where New York went from a local city to being a world capital.

875
00:56:01,920 --> 00:56:04,400
It was winter that drove those changes

876
00:56:04,400 --> 00:56:07,160
and really forced the city to become what it is today.

877
00:56:08,920 --> 00:56:11,800
Like the enlightened Scots 100 years earlier,

878
00:56:11,800 --> 00:56:15,800
19th century New Yorkers felt secure in their modern city,

879
00:56:15,800 --> 00:56:19,240
immune to the perils of the natural world.

880
00:56:19,240 --> 00:56:24,920
But winter likes to remind us of our frailty from time to time.

881
00:56:24,920 --> 00:56:26,720
The Great White Hurricane,

882
00:56:26,720 --> 00:56:30,960
a blizzard that hit the city on the night of 12th March 1888,

883
00:56:30,960 --> 00:56:36,680
killed 200 people and almost every form of infrastructure failed.

884
00:56:36,680 --> 00:56:38,760
The city was left paralysed,

885
00:56:38,760 --> 00:56:42,240
with no functioning transport or communication.

886
00:56:44,600 --> 00:56:46,360
By the end of the 19th century,

887
00:56:46,360 --> 00:56:50,400
lower Manhattan was turning into a financial capital of the world,

888
00:56:50,400 --> 00:56:52,320
and it relied on communication.

889
00:56:52,320 --> 00:56:54,200
Telegraph and telephone wires,

890
00:56:54,200 --> 00:56:57,040
and then, soon after, electrical wires as well.

891
00:56:57,040 --> 00:57:00,320
When they had a hard winter, like during the blizzard of '88,

892
00:57:00,320 --> 00:57:01,560
ice would form on those wires

893
00:57:01,560 --> 00:57:04,880
and the weight would cause the poles to come down or the wires to snap.

894
00:57:04,880 --> 00:57:06,440
That made the city decide

895
00:57:06,440 --> 00:57:10,200
to start enforcing the rules that were already on the books,

896
00:57:10,200 --> 00:57:13,000
that the utility companies had to put these wires underground,

897
00:57:13,000 --> 00:57:14,760
and you can see from these two pictures

898
00:57:14,760 --> 00:57:16,640
the drastic difference that made, right?

899
00:57:16,640 --> 00:57:20,520
It cleared out the street, which isn't very clear these days.

900
00:57:20,520 --> 00:57:23,280
But for a while, it cleared out the streetscape.

901
00:57:27,600 --> 00:57:32,000
For Stieglitz, there was no question what made the streetscape look best.

902
00:57:32,000 --> 00:57:35,080
Whenever it snowed, he would set out with his camera

903
00:57:35,080 --> 00:57:37,160
to capture New York transformed.

904
00:57:39,720 --> 00:57:43,400
He photographed the birth of the city we recognise today,

905
00:57:43,400 --> 00:57:46,760
like this view of the Flatiron building in the snow,

906
00:57:46,760 --> 00:57:48,840
at the dawn of the skyscraper age.

907
00:57:50,360 --> 00:57:53,960
Always experimenting, he dramatically cropped this picture

908
00:57:53,960 --> 00:57:56,480
to emphasise the building's verticality.

909
00:57:58,200 --> 00:58:02,280
"It appeared to be moving toward me like the bow of a monster steamer,"

910
00:58:02,280 --> 00:58:07,560
Stieglitz said, "A picture of a new America still in the making."

911
00:58:07,560 --> 00:58:09,440
As a prodigal son of New York,

912
00:58:09,440 --> 00:58:13,480
he returned to the city with a European modernist's eye.

913
00:58:13,480 --> 00:58:16,160
This picture, City Of Ambition,

914
00:58:16,160 --> 00:58:18,720
helped to establish the Manhattan skyline

915
00:58:18,720 --> 00:58:21,960
as a futurist Utopian icon,

916
00:58:21,960 --> 00:58:24,480
But the street plan still betrays

917
00:58:24,480 --> 00:58:26,760
the original landscape it was built on.

918
00:58:30,560 --> 00:58:32,880
There's a clue about what used to be here in the name.

919
00:58:32,880 --> 00:58:36,720
Canal Street. It used to be a canal that drained lower Manhattan.

920
00:58:36,720 --> 00:58:40,720
Now the drainage ditch is still here. It's today a sewer,

921
00:58:40,720 --> 00:58:43,400
and it was actually New York's very first covered sewer.

922
00:58:43,400 --> 00:58:45,280
When you get a big snowfall, for example,

923
00:58:45,280 --> 00:58:46,400
and all of that snow melts

924
00:58:46,400 --> 00:58:48,360
and you don't want it flooding the streets,

925
00:58:48,360 --> 00:58:51,480
that has to go out to the rivers.

926
00:58:51,480 --> 00:58:54,400
Steve describes himself as a guerrilla historian

927
00:58:54,400 --> 00:58:57,960
and his explorations of lost urban infrastructure

928
00:58:57,960 --> 00:58:59,280
are not always done

929
00:58:59,280 --> 00:59:02,680
with permission from the relevant authorities.

930
00:59:02,680 --> 00:59:05,840
So I try not to have an audience sometimes when I do this,

931
00:59:05,840 --> 00:59:08,760
cos they wouldn't always understand.

932
00:59:10,120 --> 00:59:13,120
To my mind, what's really cool is that when you go underground,

933
00:59:13,120 --> 00:59:14,440
you can go into the past.

934
00:59:14,440 --> 00:59:16,800
You can see how the city used to be.

935
00:59:16,800 --> 00:59:18,320
Still flowin'!

936
00:59:24,160 --> 00:59:26,440
SIRENS BLARE

937
00:59:30,360 --> 00:59:33,560
Even today, blizzards can threaten loss of life,

938
00:59:33,560 --> 00:59:36,320
but centrally-heated urban environments

939
00:59:36,320 --> 00:59:40,880
insulate us from the harsh reality of extreme climate events,

940
00:59:40,880 --> 00:59:42,800
and from the patterns of the year.

941
00:59:43,840 --> 00:59:45,680
At the end of the 19th century

942
00:59:45,680 --> 00:59:48,360
the population balance shifted rapidly.

943
00:59:48,360 --> 00:59:50,960
More and more people became city dwellers,

944
00:59:50,960 --> 00:59:53,160
and sought to remove the possibility

945
00:59:53,160 --> 00:59:55,920
that climate could interfere with commerce.

946
00:59:58,280 --> 01:00:02,960
Winter seemed irksome at worst, and as the last snow melted away,

947
01:00:02,960 --> 01:00:05,760
the fatal power of the cold was forgotten.

948
01:00:09,920 --> 01:00:13,640
In pursuit of the elusive connection to the seasonal rhythms,

949
01:00:13,640 --> 01:00:16,600
the Italian painter, Giovanni Segantini

950
01:00:16,600 --> 01:00:19,560
left the industrial city of Milan where he had grown up

951
01:00:19,560 --> 01:00:23,120
for the more extreme climate of the Alps.

952
01:00:23,120 --> 01:00:27,040
Painting in the mountains above the Swiss town of St Moritz,

953
01:00:27,040 --> 01:00:31,440
he rediscovered the power of winter as a metaphor for death.

954
01:00:33,160 --> 01:00:36,080
Housed in a museum dedicated to his work,

955
01:00:36,080 --> 01:00:39,080
the triptych, Life, Nature and Death

956
01:00:39,080 --> 01:00:42,080
showed landscapes from the local Engadin valley.

957
01:00:44,480 --> 01:00:46,480
"Death" is a winter dawn.

958
01:00:49,160 --> 01:00:52,200
Giovanni Segantini, he was really attracted to winter

959
01:00:52,200 --> 01:00:56,480
because it was such an extreme season for him.

960
01:00:56,480 --> 01:00:59,280
The white of the snow fascinated him,

961
01:00:59,280 --> 01:01:03,720
and he really played also with the light and the colours,

962
01:01:03,720 --> 01:01:08,280
because the reflections in winter are so much stronger.

963
01:01:08,280 --> 01:01:11,200
So for him, it was just something magic.

964
01:01:12,240 --> 01:01:16,960
You can basically feel the crispy air in his paintings.

965
01:01:18,760 --> 01:01:22,680
That Segantini became a painter at all was something of a miracle.

966
01:01:25,200 --> 01:01:27,760
He lost his mother when he was only five years-old

967
01:01:27,760 --> 01:01:31,840
and his father took him to a sister in Milan

968
01:01:31,840 --> 01:01:35,320
and there he had a very gruesome and difficult childhood.

969
01:01:35,320 --> 01:01:37,200
He was actually a street kid.

970
01:01:37,200 --> 01:01:40,920
But he didn't feel comfortable in a big town like Milan

971
01:01:40,920 --> 01:01:43,720
so he was looking for nature.

972
01:01:43,720 --> 01:01:47,760
He just wanted to go higher up, and that was towards the light,

973
01:01:47,760 --> 01:01:49,160
towards the mountains.

974
01:01:50,320 --> 01:01:52,520
The picture shows a family group

975
01:01:52,520 --> 01:01:56,920
watching as two undertakers carry a body to a waiting horse-drawn sled.

976
01:01:59,680 --> 01:02:03,240
Above the mountains hovers a large, billowing cloud,

977
01:02:03,240 --> 01:02:05,080
glowing in the dawn sunlight.

978
01:02:06,480 --> 01:02:09,520
His art took the physical reality of winter

979
01:02:09,520 --> 01:02:12,360
and gave it a strongly metaphorical form.

980
01:02:12,360 --> 01:02:16,600
Romantic and mysterious, but always rooted in the landscape.

981
01:02:18,240 --> 01:02:22,400
I think he chose to represent death in winter

982
01:02:22,400 --> 01:02:28,120
because it's such a brutal and almost cruel season.

983
01:02:31,200 --> 01:02:36,760
He wanted to show the grandiosity of the mountains, of nature.

984
01:02:36,760 --> 01:02:41,640
That that would overcome the pain of the loss of this child.

985
01:02:44,000 --> 01:02:46,640
I would say the direction of the horse,

986
01:02:46,640 --> 01:02:51,360
that it would carry the child, the dead child, towards the light.

987
01:02:51,360 --> 01:02:55,080
So there is some sort of hope after death.

988
01:02:56,080 --> 01:02:59,760
Segantini would take his vast canvases to his subject

989
01:02:59,760 --> 01:03:03,600
and work in the open, constructing a temporary wooden shelter

990
01:03:03,600 --> 01:03:05,600
if the weather turned against him.

991
01:03:06,840 --> 01:03:09,640
He became immensely successful in his lifetime,

992
01:03:09,640 --> 01:03:12,360
with works exhibited all over Europe,

993
01:03:12,360 --> 01:03:15,400
but his mother gave up Austrian citizenship

994
01:03:15,400 --> 01:03:18,520
whilst omitting to replace it with anything else.

995
01:03:18,520 --> 01:03:23,360
Stateless, Segantini was unable to leave Switzerland.

996
01:03:23,360 --> 01:03:27,600
He was a very solitary soul and he wasn't able to travel,

997
01:03:27,600 --> 01:03:30,440
so his only choice and passion

998
01:03:30,440 --> 01:03:33,320
was actually to stay in his mountains

999
01:03:33,320 --> 01:03:36,720
and try to get the beauty and the light,

1000
01:03:36,720 --> 01:03:38,880
this very, very special light,

1001
01:03:38,880 --> 01:03:42,680
and that was actually the quest of his life and painting,

1002
01:03:42,680 --> 01:03:45,080
to really show the world

1003
01:03:45,080 --> 01:03:49,800
the beautiful magic light of the Engadin and the mountains.

1004
01:03:52,040 --> 01:03:54,200
Whilst working to finish this picture

1005
01:03:54,200 --> 01:03:57,760
he spent long hours at high altitude in the mountains.

1006
01:03:57,760 --> 01:03:59,320
The strain weakened him.

1007
01:03:59,320 --> 01:04:03,400
He developed peritonitis and died in his painting hut

1008
01:04:03,400 --> 01:04:06,080
overlooking the Engadin valley that he loved.

1009
01:04:08,760 --> 01:04:09,960
He was 41.

1010
01:04:13,440 --> 01:04:17,920
THEY PLAY "SHOUT" BY THE ISLEY BROTHERS

1011
01:04:19,880 --> 01:04:21,000
In St Moritz today,

1012
01:04:21,000 --> 01:04:24,040
it's difficult to see winter as a metaphor for death.

1013
01:04:24,040 --> 01:04:27,080
In temperatures of -20 degrees,

1014
01:04:27,080 --> 01:04:29,800
the frozen lake becomes a horse-racing track

1015
01:04:29,800 --> 01:04:33,480
to stage the White Turf Festival, and its accompanying party.

1016
01:04:37,440 --> 01:04:41,120
These revellers, like the Londoners on Hondius' frozen Thames,

1017
01:04:41,120 --> 01:04:46,440
or the Venetians at their carnival, are perfectly happy out in the cold.

1018
01:04:46,440 --> 01:04:49,160
But this cavalier attitude to the temperature

1019
01:04:49,160 --> 01:04:52,920
requires the certainty of a refuge from the cold.

1020
01:04:52,920 --> 01:04:56,400
For the homeless, winter was still a killer.

1021
01:05:05,360 --> 01:05:07,880
In the rapidly expanding city of New York,

1022
01:05:07,880 --> 01:05:11,880
a group of artists, later known as the Ashcan School,

1023
01:05:11,880 --> 01:05:15,800
gave winter an urban setting every bit as uncompromising

1024
01:05:15,800 --> 01:05:17,880
as Segantini's portrayal of death.

1025
01:05:23,720 --> 01:05:25,160
On the margins of society,

1026
01:05:25,160 --> 01:05:27,040
the bums of Manhattan,

1027
01:05:27,040 --> 01:05:29,840
the subject of this picture by George Bellows,

1028
01:05:29,840 --> 01:05:33,080
were still vulnerable to the cruelty of a bitter winter.

1029
01:05:41,720 --> 01:05:44,960
What I love about this picture is Bellows really captures

1030
01:05:44,960 --> 01:05:46,440
the eternal New York story,

1031
01:05:46,440 --> 01:05:48,920
which is, "Out with the old and in with the new."

1032
01:05:50,920 --> 01:05:53,360
The Queensboro Bridge, which we're standing under,

1033
01:05:53,360 --> 01:05:55,680
hasn't even opened yet.

1034
01:05:55,680 --> 01:05:58,960
It's about to open in, I would say, three or four months.

1035
01:05:58,960 --> 01:06:03,240
This is probably early 1909, and the bridge opens in May.

1036
01:06:03,240 --> 01:06:05,960
And the bridge signifies new New York.

1037
01:06:05,960 --> 01:06:07,720
The city is expanding and growing

1038
01:06:07,720 --> 01:06:10,520
and the subways are only about five years old.

1039
01:06:10,520 --> 01:06:13,120
These are all tremendous changes in the city.

1040
01:06:14,120 --> 01:06:16,160
And these men have no place in it.

1041
01:06:16,160 --> 01:06:18,600
These men are pushed under the bridge.

1042
01:06:18,600 --> 01:06:21,400
What Bellows is telling us is they're New York's refuse.

1043
01:06:21,400 --> 01:06:22,920
They're New York's trash.

1044
01:06:25,800 --> 01:06:28,360
The Ashcan painters saw themselves in opposition

1045
01:06:28,360 --> 01:06:31,280
to the whimsical impressionism of Childe Hassam

1046
01:06:31,280 --> 01:06:32,640
and had more in common

1047
01:06:32,640 --> 01:06:35,720
with the documentary photography of Stieglitz.

1048
01:06:35,720 --> 01:06:38,160
Winter was a frequent subject for both,

1049
01:06:38,160 --> 01:06:39,920
but for Bellows especially,

1050
01:06:39,920 --> 01:06:42,520
his art had a powerful social conscience.

1051
01:06:44,160 --> 01:06:45,720
I think winter underscores

1052
01:06:45,720 --> 01:06:47,320
the rawness and the cruelty.

1053
01:06:48,400 --> 01:06:50,840
This isn't fluffy, wonderful snow

1054
01:06:50,840 --> 01:06:54,560
that you're playing in or that's exciting and beautiful.

1055
01:06:54,560 --> 01:06:56,840
This is a raw scene.

1056
01:06:56,840 --> 01:06:58,840
This is a cold, March day,

1057
01:06:58,840 --> 01:07:01,880
where the wind is coming off the river.

1058
01:07:01,880 --> 01:07:04,640
They're huddled by a fire, but it doesn't matter.

1059
01:07:04,640 --> 01:07:07,120
You know in their bones they are cold.

1060
01:07:07,120 --> 01:07:11,320
And if they have a torn boot, their feet are wet. They feel it.

1061
01:07:11,320 --> 01:07:13,240
This was a whole neighbourhood

1062
01:07:13,240 --> 01:07:16,240
of tanneries and breweries and slaughterhouses.

1063
01:07:16,240 --> 01:07:19,280
I mean, it was a pretty filthy, disgusting place.

1064
01:07:19,280 --> 01:07:22,000
You can just imagine how bad it smelled.

1065
01:07:22,000 --> 01:07:24,800
Nobody in New York City wanted to live near the rivers.

1066
01:07:24,800 --> 01:07:28,240
That's why Fifth Avenue became such a posh street at the time.

1067
01:07:28,240 --> 01:07:30,360
It's the centre of the island of Manhattan.

1068
01:07:30,360 --> 01:07:33,280
It's as far away from this as you can get.

1069
01:07:33,280 --> 01:07:37,640
The aim of the Ashcan School was to celebrate an urban vitality,

1070
01:07:37,640 --> 01:07:41,200
capturing spontaneous moments of everyday life.

1071
01:07:41,200 --> 01:07:43,520
But Bellows was also keen to document

1072
01:07:43,520 --> 01:07:45,320
the rapid change in New York,

1073
01:07:45,320 --> 01:07:48,000
and he knew that both the tenement building

1074
01:07:48,000 --> 01:07:50,000
and the men huddled in its shadow

1075
01:07:50,000 --> 01:07:53,040
would soon be swept away by the expanding city.

1076
01:07:55,600 --> 01:07:59,640
The light is brilliant, and what's interesting about the painting

1077
01:07:59,640 --> 01:08:01,920
is that at the top of the tenement,

1078
01:08:01,920 --> 01:08:04,760
and at the bridge and the sky, the light is very redemptive.

1079
01:08:04,760 --> 01:08:07,680
You can imagine the people who were on the bridge

1080
01:08:07,680 --> 01:08:09,760
or who will be on the bridge in a few months,

1081
01:08:09,760 --> 01:08:12,920
going across in this great, grand new city,

1082
01:08:12,920 --> 01:08:17,720
you know, everything's light and beautiful and promising.

1083
01:08:17,720 --> 01:08:20,480
And underneath it, where nobody can see,

1084
01:08:20,480 --> 01:08:22,960
these men are swept under the bridge.

1085
01:08:22,960 --> 01:08:25,960
Literally swept into the shadows of New York City.

1086
01:08:35,000 --> 01:08:36,360
Another Ashcan painter

1087
01:08:36,360 --> 01:08:40,360
with a romantic love for New York was John Sloan.

1088
01:08:40,360 --> 01:08:43,320
The great thing about painting the city, he said,

1089
01:08:43,320 --> 01:08:45,920
was that landmarks are torn down so rapidly

1090
01:08:45,920 --> 01:08:48,760
that your canvases become historical records

1091
01:08:48,760 --> 01:08:51,120
almost before the paint on them is dry.

1092
01:08:53,240 --> 01:08:55,200
Sloan loved winter.

1093
01:08:55,200 --> 01:08:59,480
He caught perfectly the impersonal and solitary nature of urban life,

1094
01:08:59,480 --> 01:09:01,840
and by setting his subjects in winter,

1095
01:09:01,840 --> 01:09:05,440
he gave them another reason not to linger on their journey,

1096
01:09:05,440 --> 01:09:07,360
hurrying home to the warm.

1097
01:09:07,360 --> 01:09:11,120
He recorded the last days of the "El" trains,

1098
01:09:11,120 --> 01:09:14,880
the elevated tracks that had failed in the blizzard of 1888,

1099
01:09:14,880 --> 01:09:17,560
and had been rendered redundant by the subway.

1100
01:09:20,480 --> 01:09:24,320
Sloan was fascinated by European movements like Cubism,

1101
01:09:24,320 --> 01:09:26,080
and struck up a friendship

1102
01:09:26,080 --> 01:09:29,600
with the pioneer of conceptual art, Marcel Duchamp.

1103
01:09:37,680 --> 01:09:40,640
On a bitter, winter night in January 1917,

1104
01:09:40,640 --> 01:09:45,640
Sloan, Duchamp and several friends broke into the Washington Arch,

1105
01:09:45,640 --> 01:09:48,680
in the artistic ghetto of Greenwich Village.

1106
01:09:48,680 --> 01:09:50,120
It was snowing lightly

1107
01:09:50,120 --> 01:09:53,520
and the Arch Conspirators, as they called themselves,

1108
01:09:53,520 --> 01:09:57,320
decorated the roof with balloons and huddled in blankets,

1109
01:09:57,320 --> 01:10:00,760
drinking tea and moonshine, and letting off cap guns.

1110
01:10:02,240 --> 01:10:05,880
By having this party in what was supposed to be a serious monument

1111
01:10:05,880 --> 01:10:10,520
built by the city, they were making a claim on public space.

1112
01:10:11,520 --> 01:10:14,440
The event did have a serious purpose.

1113
01:10:14,440 --> 01:10:16,400
The United States was on the verge

1114
01:10:16,400 --> 01:10:18,920
of committing troops to the First World War

1115
01:10:18,920 --> 01:10:22,040
and the Arch Conspirators read a proclamation,

1116
01:10:22,040 --> 01:10:23,680
declaring the establishment

1117
01:10:23,680 --> 01:10:27,120
of the Free and Independent Republic of Greenwich Village.

1118
01:10:28,160 --> 01:10:31,000
There was a lot of fear at the time about saboteurs,

1119
01:10:31,000 --> 01:10:33,360
especially about potential anarchists.

1120
01:10:33,360 --> 01:10:36,720
The same thing has been happening since September 11th.

1121
01:10:36,720 --> 01:10:40,240
Today it's terrorists. Back then it was anarchists.

1122
01:10:40,240 --> 01:10:44,440
The fear is actually similar, and the way the city reacts

1123
01:10:44,440 --> 01:10:49,320
to people who want to try to make the city their own is often the same.

1124
01:10:49,320 --> 01:10:51,600
I see similarities with the way

1125
01:10:51,600 --> 01:10:54,880
that Sloan and his peers were painting at the time.

1126
01:10:54,880 --> 01:10:57,760
The Ashcan school of painting took

1127
01:10:57,760 --> 01:11:01,360
really, the existing landscape of the city and celebrated it,

1128
01:11:01,360 --> 01:11:03,520
things that seemed kind of banal.

1129
01:11:03,520 --> 01:11:06,960
So I love that. I think they were doing the same thing with this party.

1130
01:11:06,960 --> 01:11:09,360
They were taking this existing structure

1131
01:11:09,360 --> 01:11:12,200
and making it into their own, making it something fun.

1132
01:11:12,200 --> 01:11:16,840
I've always liked this thing a lot more, knowing that in 1917,

1133
01:11:16,840 --> 01:11:20,320
these crazy artists had a party all night at the top.

1134
01:11:20,320 --> 01:11:22,040
I wish I could have joined them.

1135
01:11:22,040 --> 01:11:26,520
The declaration of independence must surely have been written by Duchamp,

1136
01:11:26,520 --> 01:11:31,560
consisting as it did solely of the repetition of the word "whereas".

1137
01:11:31,560 --> 01:11:35,760
Whereas...whereas...whereas.

1138
01:11:36,760 --> 01:11:40,680
We declare the free and independent Republic of Greenwich Village.

1139
01:11:44,920 --> 01:11:47,480
The Independent Republic of Greenwich Village

1140
01:11:47,480 --> 01:11:51,200
failed to prevent the United States from entering the Great War.

1141
01:11:53,720 --> 01:11:57,320
Napoleon had abolished winter breaks in wartime

1142
01:11:57,320 --> 01:12:01,760
and there was no let-up in the slaughter on the Western Front.

1143
01:12:01,760 --> 01:12:05,240
The Battle of Cambrai in November 1917

1144
01:12:05,240 --> 01:12:09,240
saw the first use of large numbers of tanks by the Allies

1145
01:12:09,240 --> 01:12:12,440
but after a brief period of spectacular success,

1146
01:12:12,440 --> 01:12:14,080
the advance was checked,

1147
01:12:14,080 --> 01:12:16,760
the Germans retook most of the territory

1148
01:12:16,760 --> 01:12:18,400
and by the end of November,

1149
01:12:18,400 --> 01:12:20,520
things were back where they started.

1150
01:12:22,880 --> 01:12:24,680
Then it began to snow.

1151
01:12:27,520 --> 01:12:29,320
The German front line ran

1152
01:12:29,320 --> 01:12:32,600
just to the north of the hamlet of La Vacquerie,

1153
01:12:32,600 --> 01:12:36,360
with the British trenches the other side of an area of high ground

1154
01:12:36,360 --> 01:12:37,840
known as the Welch Ridge.

1155
01:12:41,920 --> 01:12:45,960
On 30th December, the Germans launched a surprise attack,

1156
01:12:45,960 --> 01:12:48,040
turning winter to their advantage.

1157
01:12:50,320 --> 01:12:52,360
The snow was two, three feet deep.

1158
01:12:52,360 --> 01:12:58,680
Everything was white and just before dawn, in the midst of a freezing fog,

1159
01:12:58,680 --> 01:13:00,800
they came over this slope,

1160
01:13:00,800 --> 01:13:03,520
all dressed in white camouflage.

1161
01:13:03,520 --> 01:13:05,520
And they were immensely successful.

1162
01:13:05,520 --> 01:13:07,360
And later that day,

1163
01:13:07,360 --> 01:13:11,400
the British decided to try and launch a kind of counter-attack.

1164
01:13:11,400 --> 01:13:14,800
This painting depicts the moment

1165
01:13:14,800 --> 01:13:19,320
when that regiment was ordered to go over the top.

1166
01:13:20,960 --> 01:13:24,400
Though later employed as a war artist, on this day,

1167
01:13:24,400 --> 01:13:26,640
John Nash was a serving soldier

1168
01:13:26,640 --> 01:13:29,560
fighting in the Artists Rifles Battalion.

1169
01:13:31,520 --> 01:13:33,440
You can see from the painting

1170
01:13:33,440 --> 01:13:35,960
that these guys didn't stand a chance

1171
01:13:35,960 --> 01:13:40,240
because everything here was white, everything in the painting is white.

1172
01:13:40,240 --> 01:13:43,240
Snow white, white clouds,

1173
01:13:43,240 --> 01:13:45,280
white mist, white surface,

1174
01:13:45,280 --> 01:13:48,680
and what are they wearing? They're wearing dark brown greatcoats

1175
01:13:48,680 --> 01:13:51,920
so the German gunners just pick them off.

1176
01:13:51,920 --> 01:13:53,680
80 men went over the top

1177
01:13:53,680 --> 01:13:57,640
and within just a few minutes, 68 of them had been killed

1178
01:13:57,640 --> 01:14:01,680
and, fortunately, one of the dozen men to escape unscathed

1179
01:14:01,680 --> 01:14:05,040
was John Nash, who painted this picture.

1180
01:14:05,040 --> 01:14:07,680
And I think one of the reasons he survived was

1181
01:14:07,680 --> 01:14:11,000
just before he went over the top, he took off his greatcoat

1182
01:14:11,000 --> 01:14:14,440
because he thought it was too conspicuous, too dark in colour,

1183
01:14:14,440 --> 01:14:18,600
and he wore a pale tunic instead, and that probably saved his life.

1184
01:14:18,600 --> 01:14:22,880
And this painting I just find incredibly powerful

1185
01:14:22,880 --> 01:14:24,560
because it's so...

1186
01:14:24,560 --> 01:14:26,560
It's so matter-of-fact, you know,

1187
01:14:26,560 --> 01:14:29,240
there's no sentimentality in it whatsoever

1188
01:14:29,240 --> 01:14:31,840
and it's the body language of these men in the row.

1189
01:14:31,840 --> 01:14:35,520
They're just sort of glumly trudging through the snow up this hill

1190
01:14:35,520 --> 01:14:37,800
towards what they know will be death.

1191
01:14:37,800 --> 01:14:41,760
These guys haven't even got out of the trench with their lives.

1192
01:14:41,760 --> 01:14:44,400
Other people have died the moment they've gone out.

1193
01:14:44,400 --> 01:14:46,280
This guy here has just been shot

1194
01:14:46,280 --> 01:14:48,320
and he's fallen down to his knees.

1195
01:14:48,320 --> 01:14:51,400
Nash hated painting figures. He couldn't paint figures very well

1196
01:14:51,400 --> 01:14:54,760
but he knew he had to do it with this painting because it was so important.

1197
01:14:54,760 --> 01:14:58,880
He thought what happened on these slopes was murder, pure and simple.

1198
01:15:01,160 --> 01:15:04,000
Like so many other actions of this conflict,

1199
01:15:04,000 --> 01:15:07,560
the attack Nash painted was largely pointless.

1200
01:15:07,560 --> 01:15:08,760
No progress was made

1201
01:15:08,760 --> 01:15:11,400
by the sacrifice of the lives of his comrades

1202
01:15:11,400 --> 01:15:14,480
and the few yards of mud over which they fought

1203
01:15:14,480 --> 01:15:16,880
remained a part of no man's land.

1204
01:15:18,480 --> 01:15:21,360
When most people think about the First World War,

1205
01:15:21,360 --> 01:15:25,280
what do they think of? Well, they think of mud and they think of rain

1206
01:15:25,280 --> 01:15:28,840
and they think of lifeless landscapes, trees without leaves,

1207
01:15:28,840 --> 01:15:31,440
they think of long nights and freezing soldiers.

1208
01:15:31,440 --> 01:15:33,880
What they're thinking about is winter.

1209
01:15:33,880 --> 01:15:36,920
That was what the First World War was.

1210
01:15:36,920 --> 01:15:42,160
It was a really long, brutal, murderous winter

1211
01:15:42,160 --> 01:15:43,960
but it wasn't a natural winter.

1212
01:15:43,960 --> 01:15:46,560
It was a winter that we manufactured.

1213
01:15:52,640 --> 01:15:56,880
This man-made misery inspired Nash's contemporary,

1214
01:15:56,880 --> 01:16:00,000
the young futurist painter Richard Nevinson,

1215
01:16:00,000 --> 01:16:02,560
to produce his greatest works.

1216
01:16:02,560 --> 01:16:06,320
La Mitrailleuse combined his fascination for machinery

1217
01:16:06,320 --> 01:16:09,000
with a horror at the brutality of conflict.

1218
01:16:09,000 --> 01:16:11,040
It was described by Walter Sickert

1219
01:16:11,040 --> 01:16:15,120
as "the most authoritative and concentrated utterance on war

1220
01:16:15,120 --> 01:16:18,040
"in the history of painting."

1221
01:16:18,040 --> 01:16:22,040
Nevinson, the son of campaigning liberal parents, was a pacifist

1222
01:16:22,040 --> 01:16:25,120
and worked in the trenches as an ambulance driver.

1223
01:16:26,160 --> 01:16:29,200
After the war, he continued to use his art as a platform

1224
01:16:29,200 --> 01:16:33,000
for social commentary, but in order to reach a wider audience,

1225
01:16:33,000 --> 01:16:34,560
he became a regular columnist

1226
01:16:34,560 --> 01:16:37,160
for the Daily Mail and the Daily Express,

1227
01:16:37,160 --> 01:16:39,760
becoming more curmudgeonly as he grew older.

1228
01:16:41,440 --> 01:16:44,560
One of his pet hates was football.

1229
01:16:44,560 --> 01:16:47,440
He had been a profoundly unhappy schoolboy,

1230
01:16:47,440 --> 01:16:49,720
sent away to boarding school at Uppingham

1231
01:16:49,720 --> 01:16:51,360
to allow his mother and father

1232
01:16:51,360 --> 01:16:54,120
more time to concentrate on their various causes,

1233
01:16:54,120 --> 01:16:58,400
and he associated winter with compulsory organised sport.

1234
01:16:58,400 --> 01:17:01,280
The misery of afternoons on the football field

1235
01:17:01,280 --> 01:17:02,840
was still fresh in his mind

1236
01:17:02,840 --> 01:17:05,000
when he painted this picture

1237
01:17:05,000 --> 01:17:07,840
in 1930, at the age of 41.

1238
01:17:12,080 --> 01:17:13,640
Nevinson would be horrified

1239
01:17:13,640 --> 01:17:16,720
by the idea that this painting would now be being used

1240
01:17:16,720 --> 01:17:19,000
to promote football in any way.

1241
01:17:19,000 --> 01:17:20,560
He despised all sports.

1242
01:17:20,560 --> 01:17:23,640
Right from when he was at Uppingham School and he was bullied,

1243
01:17:23,640 --> 01:17:26,720
he considered that sport was something for brutes, basically.

1244
01:17:26,720 --> 01:17:30,480
Nevinson was very much associated with the Italian futurists,

1245
01:17:30,480 --> 01:17:34,440
and in the Italian futurist manifesto, they included sport

1246
01:17:34,440 --> 01:17:36,840
as something that they felt was really important

1247
01:17:36,840 --> 01:17:38,760
to put right at the heart of culture.

1248
01:17:38,760 --> 01:17:42,160
And Nevinson did put sport within his art,

1249
01:17:42,160 --> 01:17:45,880
but he put it within his art to show us what a waste of time it was.

1250
01:17:45,880 --> 01:17:50,480
Nevinson never indicated the location of Any Wintry Afternoon

1251
01:17:50,480 --> 01:17:53,520
but the dark satanic mills that form its background

1252
01:17:53,520 --> 01:17:56,240
are always assumed to be in Manchester,

1253
01:17:56,240 --> 01:17:58,920
a part of the country he had rarely visited,

1254
01:17:58,920 --> 01:18:03,160
and for which he had a stereotypical southerner's contempt.

1255
01:18:03,160 --> 01:18:05,040
This painting really shows

1256
01:18:05,040 --> 01:18:08,040
that Nevinson thought it truly was grim up north.

1257
01:18:08,040 --> 01:18:11,280
The closer you look at this painting, the more of that you see,

1258
01:18:11,280 --> 01:18:13,480
whether it's the gasometer in the background,

1259
01:18:13,480 --> 01:18:15,280
the train, the steam coming off it,

1260
01:18:15,280 --> 01:18:17,520
the darkness, the thunderclouds, the rain.

1261
01:18:17,520 --> 01:18:20,840
Football had previously been seen very much as a northerner's game.

1262
01:18:20,840 --> 01:18:23,680
No London club had won the league up until this point

1263
01:18:23,680 --> 01:18:25,880
and there's always been great discussion

1264
01:18:25,880 --> 01:18:28,400
about whether the football teams in the painting

1265
01:18:28,400 --> 01:18:31,160
are Manchester United and Manchester City, or not.

1266
01:18:31,160 --> 01:18:32,920
And Nevinson was furious at the idea

1267
01:18:32,920 --> 01:18:34,960
that anyone should even be discussing this

1268
01:18:34,960 --> 01:18:37,480
and you can see, the tops are red and

1269
01:18:37,480 --> 01:18:40,120
the socks are blue. He doesn't care.

1270
01:18:40,120 --> 01:18:41,440
He's not trying to say

1271
01:18:41,440 --> 01:18:44,040
this is a particular player, this is a particular team.

1272
01:18:44,040 --> 01:18:46,600
He would say, "Well, you know, that's not the point.

1273
01:18:46,600 --> 01:18:48,760
"The point is, stop watching football."

1274
01:18:48,760 --> 01:18:51,640
It's often said that the Premiership era is the first time

1275
01:18:51,640 --> 01:18:54,160
where there's really been a major tension

1276
01:18:54,160 --> 01:18:57,760
between the money that is in the game, and the fans of the game

1277
01:18:57,760 --> 01:19:00,680
but actually, a very similar thing was happening in the 1920s.

1278
01:19:00,680 --> 01:19:03,160
This was the time when the first £10,000 footballer

1279
01:19:03,160 --> 01:19:06,040
had just been sold. The clubs were turning into businesses

1280
01:19:06,040 --> 01:19:10,040
and Nevinson wrote extensively about this in his very provocative columns

1281
01:19:10,040 --> 01:19:12,160
in The Mail and the Express at the time,

1282
01:19:12,160 --> 01:19:16,920
you know, openly hostile to what this was doing to our culture.

1283
01:19:16,920 --> 01:19:18,200
This painting goes to show

1284
01:19:18,200 --> 01:19:21,080
that really, he thought that sport was the opium of the masses

1285
01:19:21,080 --> 01:19:23,880
and he wanted the masses to stop taking opium, and to go

1286
01:19:23,880 --> 01:19:26,640
and do something else instead, that was a lot more cultured.

1287
01:19:28,040 --> 01:19:31,920
Nevinson's vision of winter is a far cry from Bruegel's.

1288
01:19:31,920 --> 01:19:35,760
400 years after the hunters' struggle for survival in the snow,

1289
01:19:35,760 --> 01:19:38,160
Nevinson's equally abject figures

1290
01:19:38,160 --> 01:19:41,680
are merely struggling to win a football match.

1291
01:19:41,680 --> 01:19:44,360
Had winter finally given up the fight?

1292
01:19:45,840 --> 01:19:49,320
During the 1930s, winters were noticeably milder.

1293
01:19:49,320 --> 01:19:51,960
Scotland experienced an almost complete absence

1294
01:19:51,960 --> 01:19:55,440
of significant snowfall in the winter of 1931.

1295
01:19:55,440 --> 01:19:59,160
The Reverend Walker's skates would have stayed in the cupboard.

1296
01:20:00,360 --> 01:20:01,720
For the first time,

1297
01:20:01,720 --> 01:20:05,360
scientists began to express concern that the world was warming up.

1298
01:20:05,360 --> 01:20:09,560
The US Weather Bureau concluded in a survey in 1934

1299
01:20:09,560 --> 01:20:13,080
that the winters were indeed colder and the snow deeper

1300
01:20:13,080 --> 01:20:15,320
when Grandad was a lad.

1301
01:20:15,320 --> 01:20:18,240
But winter wasn't giving up yet.

1302
01:20:18,240 --> 01:20:22,800
The euphoria that followed victory in World War II was short-lived.

1303
01:20:22,800 --> 01:20:25,440
Rationing continued, and there was a sense that

1304
01:20:25,440 --> 01:20:29,280
things weren't really working out for Britain in the post-war world.

1305
01:20:29,280 --> 01:20:31,560
In January 1947,

1306
01:20:31,560 --> 01:20:36,000
the country was plunged into the most severe winter of the century.

1307
01:20:36,000 --> 01:20:38,480
MUSIC: "Stormy Weather" by Etta James

1308
01:20:38,480 --> 01:20:40,480
# Don't know why

1309
01:20:40,480 --> 01:20:44,440
# There's no sun up in the sky

1310
01:20:44,440 --> 01:20:46,440
# Stormy weather... #

1311
01:20:49,680 --> 01:20:52,920
Power stations closed down for lack of coal,

1312
01:20:52,920 --> 01:20:56,800
and even the Houses of Parliament operated by candlelight.

1313
01:20:58,080 --> 01:21:02,600
The magazine Picture Post published a special edition on the crisis,

1314
01:21:02,600 --> 01:21:04,040
and chose a dramatic image

1315
01:21:04,040 --> 01:21:07,800
by the photographer Bill Brandt for the cover.

1316
01:21:08,920 --> 01:21:10,840
# Life is bare

1317
01:21:13,360 --> 01:21:17,360
# Gloom and misery everywhere

1318
01:21:17,360 --> 01:21:21,160
# Stormy weather, stormy weather... #

1319
01:21:22,560 --> 01:21:27,280
This was one of the great notorious winters in my lifetime, 1947.

1320
01:21:27,280 --> 01:21:30,200
I was only a 12-year-old boy in that winter.

1321
01:21:30,200 --> 01:21:34,000
I thought it was great fun but it was a wicked winter.

1322
01:21:34,000 --> 01:21:35,760
What this picture is

1323
01:21:35,760 --> 01:21:39,400
is the suffering of stones in silence.

1324
01:21:39,400 --> 01:21:41,440
During 1947, there wouldn't have been

1325
01:21:41,440 --> 01:21:44,080
the constant stream and flow of traffic.

1326
01:21:44,080 --> 01:21:46,320
That kind of traffic didn't exist,

1327
01:21:46,320 --> 01:21:51,320
so this would have been a total wilderness here.

1328
01:21:56,720 --> 01:21:59,520
SHEEP BAA

1329
01:22:03,200 --> 01:22:06,120
This atmospheric picture was not the sort of thing

1330
01:22:06,120 --> 01:22:10,760
Picture Post would usually have used for a cover image.

1331
01:22:10,760 --> 01:22:12,400
When you were talking about

1332
01:22:12,400 --> 01:22:16,720
one of the most dramatic winters for many generations,

1333
01:22:16,720 --> 01:22:19,320
you could have used something much more symbolic

1334
01:22:19,320 --> 01:22:21,880
like the struggle of a human being, you know,

1335
01:22:21,880 --> 01:22:26,480
trying to keep themselves warm and safe from this atrocious winter,

1336
01:22:26,480 --> 01:22:32,320
but they chose to use this poetic image of Stonehenge.

1337
01:22:32,320 --> 01:22:34,760
I mean, there's nobody in it, nothing in it.

1338
01:22:34,760 --> 01:22:37,800
I'm sure that Bill Brandt persuaded the editor

1339
01:22:37,800 --> 01:22:39,640
to go in another direction.

1340
01:22:39,640 --> 01:22:43,840
This is not the kind of thing that Picture Post was known for.

1341
01:22:43,840 --> 01:22:46,720
It's such an epic photograph.

1342
01:22:46,720 --> 01:22:49,440
Captioned "Where stands Britain?",

1343
01:22:49,440 --> 01:22:54,240
it's a monumental proposition here.

1344
01:22:54,240 --> 01:22:57,640
"What does this country stand for? Who are we?"

1345
01:22:57,640 --> 01:23:00,720
And so Brandt's picture is waiting

1346
01:23:00,720 --> 01:23:04,280
for the spirit of the nation to come rising up in some way,

1347
01:23:04,280 --> 01:23:08,880
and what does he use to depict the spirit of the nation but Stonehenge,

1348
01:23:08,880 --> 01:23:13,800
our most ancient monument? This is a going-back to first principles.

1349
01:23:13,800 --> 01:23:17,360
This is thinking about our very first identity

1350
01:23:17,360 --> 01:23:19,720
and what we might want now.

1351
01:23:20,920 --> 01:23:25,920
What are we going to build over the desolation of war?

1352
01:23:25,920 --> 01:23:29,200
And so what Brandt is brilliant at doing

1353
01:23:29,200 --> 01:23:34,560
is looking at the material reality of Britain and making it speak.

1354
01:23:34,560 --> 01:23:36,120
His pictures talk.

1355
01:23:38,280 --> 01:23:43,320
This very stark, very monumental, photograph of Stonehenge

1356
01:23:43,320 --> 01:23:45,680
seems just pausing,

1357
01:23:45,680 --> 01:23:49,160
waiting for the kind of dialogue of modern Britain to start.

1358
01:23:51,000 --> 01:23:54,360
This was published as a sort of state-of-the-nation picture

1359
01:23:54,360 --> 01:23:57,160
but, actually, it's a piece of abstract art.

1360
01:23:57,160 --> 01:24:00,600
The way that Stonehenge divides the picture in two.

1361
01:24:00,600 --> 01:24:02,440
You have the whiteness below it

1362
01:24:02,440 --> 01:24:05,240
and then that exploding, apocalyptic sky above.

1363
01:24:05,240 --> 01:24:07,240
But that sense of three layers

1364
01:24:07,240 --> 01:24:10,160
makes me think of Mark Rothko's abstract paintings

1365
01:24:10,160 --> 01:24:14,040
of exactly the same time, when he was painting vertical abstractions

1366
01:24:14,040 --> 01:24:16,720
that were divided into three layers of colour

1367
01:24:16,720 --> 01:24:20,800
and here, Brandt has managed to do that in a photograph.

1368
01:24:21,880 --> 01:24:25,560
Brandt began his career in Paris in 1929

1369
01:24:25,560 --> 01:24:29,680
and worked for a while as a studio assistant to Man Ray.

1370
01:24:29,680 --> 01:24:33,480
The thing about Bill Brandt was that really deep down,

1371
01:24:33,480 --> 01:24:36,920
I think he considered himself to be an artist

1372
01:24:36,920 --> 01:24:39,880
much more than a photographer.

1373
01:24:45,120 --> 01:24:47,560
Bill used to print his own pictures

1374
01:24:47,560 --> 01:24:52,680
and inject a huge amount of drama and blackness and darkness,

1375
01:24:52,680 --> 01:24:54,760
and that was his hallmark.

1376
01:24:54,760 --> 01:24:57,640
Everybody knew a Brandt print when they saw it,

1377
01:24:57,640 --> 01:25:00,760
but this is...much more tender.

1378
01:25:03,600 --> 01:25:08,040
Bill Brandt was quite notorious for posing up, creating things

1379
01:25:08,040 --> 01:25:12,200
that are not totally the truth, but there's nothing deceitful about this.

1380
01:25:12,200 --> 01:25:14,560
It's haunting, in a way.

1381
01:25:16,200 --> 01:25:18,880
Having made his reputation as a war photographer

1382
01:25:18,880 --> 01:25:21,840
in some of the world's most inhospitable places,

1383
01:25:21,840 --> 01:25:25,120
Don McCullin is now concentrating on landscapes,

1384
01:25:25,120 --> 01:25:28,800
but his love of winter still makes it an uncomfortable calling.

1385
01:25:30,760 --> 01:25:34,920
I see the wintertime as my moment of drama.

1386
01:25:34,920 --> 01:25:38,760
I spend hours standing in waterlogged fields,

1387
01:25:38,760 --> 01:25:40,120
watching the light.

1388
01:25:41,360 --> 01:25:45,840
I love the nakedness and I love the harshness of the light,

1389
01:25:45,840 --> 01:25:49,200
the drama of the light, which we've seen today here,

1390
01:25:49,200 --> 01:25:53,640
the skies, the sun going down early in the afternoon, you know,

1391
01:25:53,640 --> 01:25:58,040
our afternoons in the winter, they don't last very long,

1392
01:25:58,040 --> 01:26:00,600
but for me, that's the magical hour

1393
01:26:00,600 --> 01:26:03,800
when I can be alone in a field somewhere.

1394
01:26:03,800 --> 01:26:07,280
I don't mind standing for two or three hours in the same place,

1395
01:26:07,280 --> 01:26:10,560
knowing that if I stick it out, I'm going to get what I want.

1396
01:26:11,880 --> 01:26:15,440
It has to be remembered that I looked at Bill Brandt's pictures

1397
01:26:15,440 --> 01:26:19,400
as a young photographer, before I could call myself a photographer.

1398
01:26:21,040 --> 01:26:24,840
I took a lot of my disciplines from his composition

1399
01:26:24,840 --> 01:26:29,320
and almost felt sometimes that I was stealing his eye as well,

1400
01:26:29,320 --> 01:26:31,840
but nevertheless, I owe him a great deal.

1401
01:26:40,240 --> 01:26:42,560
Every picture that we're looking at here

1402
01:26:42,560 --> 01:26:45,600
is a kind of dialogue with the elements.

1403
01:26:45,600 --> 01:26:49,200
Art itself is a kind of defence mechanism

1404
01:26:49,200 --> 01:26:52,600
because if you can paint cold and snow,

1405
01:26:52,600 --> 01:26:57,080
you're exercising a kind of command over nature.

1406
01:26:57,080 --> 01:27:00,560
You're trapping it within a frame and coming to understand it,

1407
01:27:00,560 --> 01:27:06,480
and I think we've used art across the centuries as a way of coping,

1408
01:27:06,480 --> 01:27:09,480
as a kind of extra coat we put on.

1409
01:27:09,480 --> 01:27:12,080
The more we can understand winter,

1410
01:27:12,080 --> 01:27:15,720
the better equipped we are to get through it.

1411
01:27:15,720 --> 01:27:17,160
Human beings, I think,

1412
01:27:17,160 --> 01:27:21,000
have a habit of painting the things they're most scared of

1413
01:27:21,000 --> 01:27:25,200
and for so much of history, we were terrified of the winter

1414
01:27:25,200 --> 01:27:27,840
and I think that's why we kept coming back to it.

1415
01:27:27,840 --> 01:27:31,480
We felt that by painting it, by somehow putting it down on canvas,

1416
01:27:31,480 --> 01:27:33,400
we were controlling it.

1417
01:27:33,400 --> 01:27:36,920
We were coming to terms with it, we were understanding it,

1418
01:27:36,920 --> 01:27:38,760
and I think that's why

1419
01:27:38,760 --> 01:27:44,040
winter inspired some of our most powerful and beautiful artworks.

1420
01:27:45,680 --> 01:27:49,240
Today, our relationship to winter is ambivalent.

1421
01:27:49,240 --> 01:27:50,800
The terror has gone.

1422
01:27:53,160 --> 01:27:55,320
If the weather is not forthcoming,

1423
01:27:55,320 --> 01:27:57,760
we can create our own winter wonderland,

1424
01:27:57,760 --> 01:28:00,360
and skate on the ice in the centre of London

1425
01:28:00,360 --> 01:28:03,600
as if the Thames had frozen once more.

1426
01:28:03,600 --> 01:28:06,760
The seasonal shopping frenzy builds towards Christmas,

1427
01:28:06,760 --> 01:28:09,520
and leaves us with a drawn-out battle of endurance

1428
01:28:09,520 --> 01:28:11,760
as the grey light and short days

1429
01:28:11,760 --> 01:28:13,840
drag towards the promise of spring.

1430
01:28:14,920 --> 01:28:19,000
But the images of winter that art has left us for consolation

1431
01:28:19,000 --> 01:28:21,880
can still evoke that elemental sense of awe

1432
01:28:21,880 --> 01:28:25,640
we felt when the hunters set out in the snow.

1433
01:28:46,480 --> 01:28:50,000
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