Winter is one of the loveliest seasons, both in real life and in art. The snowy background and changes in light have captured the imagination of authors like Charles Dickens and painters like Caspar David Friedrich.

Here are 6 paintings that show off beautiful interpretations of the winter season.

1. The Sea of Ice (David Caspar Friedrich): Friedrich was an artist in the German Romantic tradition, drawn to capturing the beauty and grandeur of nature. In The Sea of Ice, he paints out the shipwreck of the HMS Griper on its failed expedition to the North Pole. However, Friedrich gives the iceberg responsible a much larger presence on the canvas, emphasizing its raw beauty and its power over the human explorers.

2. The Magpie (Claude Monet): As a prolific painter, Monet fashioned over a hundred paintings of winter landscapes in the course of his career. The Magpie stands out for its size, being the largest of the series. The scene is just a blackbird sitting on a fence beside a snow-covered country house, but what surprises audiences most about the painting is how Monet used dark blue instead of black on the shadows covering the snow, retaining an icy atmosphere even with his choice of paint color.

3. Winter Landscape (Edvard Munch): Munch is best remembered for the surreal imagery of The Scream, but he applied his Expressionist style to landscapes as well. This scene of a calm Norwegian mountain range covered in snow doesn't seem like much at first glance, but as we look deeper, we can pick out hues of green, blue, and pink reflected in the snow. These colors add a touch of feeling that captures the emotion of the artist when looking at the landscape.

4. Snowstorm (Francisco de Goya): Also known as La Nevada, Goya's winter contribution is far more lighthearted than his usual dark subject matter. Commissioned just after he had been named the royal painter, Goya depicts a small family huddled together as they travel through the pure white snow. Where Goya stands out is how he portrayed the family, moving away from a smiling romp in winter to a heroic struggle to brave the weather on their journey.

5. Skating Minister (Henry Raeburn): Some might find this painting of an ice-skating minister comical. The depiction of Reverend Robert Walker skating over a frozen pond in Scotland can seem fanciful, matched with his serious expression and attire. Yet Raeburn isn't mocking the Reverend, but praising him, showing him in a joyful moment on a very dark winter day.

6. Winter (Francois Boucher): This scene of a fashionable young woman and her driver on a sleigh was painted for Madame du Pompadour, the official mistress of French monarch Louis XV. Though the background is bleak and gray, the young couple are painted in bright tones of red and pink, with faint brown fur lining their garments for protection from the cold. It's a pleasant contrast of warm human feeling against an icy environment.

Image by Martin Beek on Flickr