We’ve all dreamt of riding on a golden sleigh pulled by four white horses. And just such a vehicle – possibly the most valuable sleigh in the world and once the property of the Empress Maria Theresia – is one of the many surprising treasures of our winter tale. With everything from burlesque Dutch scenes of fun on ice to frolics in a warm alcove bed, fur-clad courtesans to shivering farmers’ children, carnivals and Lenten fare, winter sun and snow flurries, no other season offers such a rich variety of artistic ideas in all fields, from applied art and painting to sculpture.

Until the Middle Ages, the arrival of winter imperilled food supplies and health in a society that was entirely dependent on nature. Since then, social and technological progress have combined to progressively mitigate its impact. And, as our exhibition shows, the cold season has its pleasurable aspects, too. The timing has also been deliberately chosen to herald the arrival of spring.

Having fallen out of fashion after the Renaissance, the winter landscape was rediscovered by artists in the late 18th century. Initially it is romanticized; later, artists turn their attention to the subtle palette of winter colours. The display in the large exhibition gallery of the Kunsthaus Zürich ranges from large-format depictions of Napoleon’s army stranded amid the ice and snow – the very picture of misery and suffering – to crystalline ponds and rivers, magnificent still lives and the pleasures of ice skating.

Kunsthaus Director Christoph Becker and curator Ronald de Leeuw present a wide-ranging, eclectic and international selection of more than 120 works of art from various genres created in Western Europe between 1450 and the 1920s. They include Dutch painting, a wealth of landscapes and Impressionist works together with Dutch allegories of the months, scenes of winter festivities and folk customs as well as still lives. Portraits and interiors offer an insight into the changing winter fashions and furnishings with which people sought to shield themselves from the cold and damp.

The selection of paintings, arranged by genres and schools, is complemented by a number of superb objects: large-format tapestries and a magnificent sleigh pulled by life-size horses, cups and goblets, delicate porcelain figures and vessels cut from semi-precious stones offer a captivating illustration of the exquisite craftsmanship deployed by supreme practitioners to satisfy their clients.

The many loans successfully negotiated over a three-year period in cooperation with the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna are drawn from some of the world’s leading museums, including the Musée d’Orsay and Musée du Louvre (Paris), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the National Gallery (London), Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam) as well as private collections and the museums’ own holdings. Paintings by Pieter Brueghel the Younger hang side by side with works by Jacob van Ruisdael, Hendrick Avercamp, Jan van Goyen, Aert van der Neer, Francisco de Goya, Kazimir Malevich, Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro and Edvard Munch.

In addition to these celebrated artists, the exhibition also presents painters whose work is rarely shown outside their country of birth; for some they will be a revelation, for others a chance to renew old acquaintances. Often they feature surprising motifs that are unique in the context of the exhibition. They include the monumental, part-frozen Niagara Falls by Hippolyte-Victor-Valentin Sebron and an autumn painting in the Japanese style by the Finnish artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Edouard Alexandre Odier’s painting depicts an episode in Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, while Pierre-Maximilien Delafontaine portrays an ice skater in triumphant pose.

From the serenity of German Romantic Carl Friedrich Lessing’s ‘Monastery Courtyard in the Snow,’ you will be transported into the turbulent world of Roman carnival in around 1650, as depicted by Johannes Lingelbach.

‘Winter Tales’ begins in the Renaissance and guides you through 400 years of social and cultural history, through bad times and good, before you finally emerge into the spring awakening of Impressionism.

Click on ‘Gallery’ for a foretaste of the delights in store in the sumptuously decorated large exhibition gallery of the Kunsthaus Zürich. Let the journey commence!