A bald eagle, its body reduced to one brown wedge, sits on a bleached grey snag while a black bear’s head pushes out of the snow behind it. Charley Harper runs a white slope diagonally across the sheet, sets blue mountains and dark firs in the top corner, and banks the bottom right with lupins, magenta fireweed, spotted tiger lilies and white pasqueflower seedheads. It was one of ten posters he painted for the National Park Service.

Two-thirds of the picture is unbroken white snow with almost nothing in it, so the flower bank and the eagle go first and the slope is a long, patient grind. Finished size 50.8 x 63.5cm.