Impressionists in Winter

by Susan Fry
An hour and a half. I sighed again. Until several years ago, of course,
painting outside during the winter at all would have been impossible. That’s
when paint was stored and carried in pigs’ bladders, which froze and chipped in
cold weather. Now that we had paints in little metal tubes, even cold couldn’t
prevent us from coaxing them out onto the palette in the most freezing storm. Of
course, we still needed the little braziers nearby as a source of heat. I lit mine. Its
flame was the brightest thing in the landscape. It barely warmed my hands.
The brush felt stiff and unwieldy through...