Christmas in art: 14 paintings from the Nativity to the Christmas tree
Five hundred years of Christmas in fourteen paintings, from a Flemish stable to a Danish family dancing round the tree, and how the feast moved from the church into the living room.
For most of its history Christmas was painted as a religious scene: a stable, a mother, a child and a crowd of angels and shepherds. Then, in the nineteenth century, painters began to paint Christmas as people actually lived it, with markets in the snow, a tree in the drawing room and children who could not sit still.
Here is that journey in fourteen paintings, from Bruges around 1485 to Sweden in 1899. Every one is restored from its museum scan and can be printed, sent as a Christmas card, or become the setting of a family portrait.
A stable and a child
Every Christmas painting begins with the Nativity. In the late Middle Ages, painters in Flanders and Germany told the story in brilliant detail, setting the stable in their own countryside and filling it with real people, real animals and real light.
1. The Nativity
Gerard David, The Nativity, c. 1485–90. Cleveland Museum of Art.
Gerard David worked in Bruges, and his stable stands in a Flemish landscape with a walled town behind it. Mary and Joseph kneel in silence before the child, who lies on the corner of her blue cloak. The colours are as clear and bright as stained glass.
2. The Adoration of the Christ Child
Master of Frankfurt, The Adoration of the Christ Child, possibly 1496–1502. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
The painter's name is lost, so we call him the Master of Frankfurt. His angels crowd round the child like eager children themselves, and more of them sing and play from the arches above. It is one of the most joyful Nativities of its age.
The feast moves indoors
In the early nineteenth century, painters in Austria and Germany started painting Christmas as a family feast. These Biedermeier pictures are full of kitchens, markets and snow, and they set the look of Christmas that the rest of Europe would soon adopt.
3. Christmas Eve Charity
Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Christmas Eve Charity, c. 1834.
A poor farming family shares its Christmas Eve supper with a beggar and his children who have come in from the cold. Waldmüller, one of the great Viennese painters of the age, turns the Christmas story into something every viewer could do: make room at the table.
4. Christmas Market
Johann Matthias Ranftl, Christmas Market, 1845.
Two children, bundled up against the cold, gaze at a stall of tiny toy figures, with a small decorated tree behind them and a dog at their feet. Ranftl was so good at animals that Vienna nicknamed him the Raphael of dogs, and this is the Christmas market as every child remembers it.
A royal fashion
The Christmas tree came to Britain and America from Germany. In 1848 the Illustrated London News printed an engraving of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their children around their tree at Windsor Castle, and within a few years families everywhere wanted one.
5. Queen Victoria's Christmas Tree
William Corden the Younger, Queen Victoria's Christmas Tree, 1850–51. Royal Collection.
This is the Queen's own tree, set on a table among presents, as Prince Albert had known it in his German childhood. It shows a Christmas that was about to become everyone's: candles on the branches, gifts beneath and the whole family gathered round.
6. Christmas-Time, The Blodgett Family
Eastman Johnson, Christmas-Time, The Blodgett Family, 1864. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
A New York family gathers in its parlour while a small girl dances in front of the tree. William Tilden Blodgett, the father, would later help found the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the picture now hangs. It was painted in 1864, in the middle of the Civil War, and its calm is almost defiant.
7. A Christmas Carol
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, A Christmas Carol, 1867. Private collection.
Rossetti's Christmas is not a scene but a song. A woman in a golden robe plays an old stringed instrument, her face lifted as if listening. The Pre-Raphaelites loved medieval music and medieval colour, and this picture is both.
8. The Christmas Fair
Georg von Rosen, The Christmas Fair, 1872. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.
The Swedish painter Georg von Rosen set his Christmas fair centuries back in time, with women in white head-dresses buying fir trees among the timber houses. It is history painting with snow on its boots, and a reminder of how old the Christmas market already felt in 1872.
9. Grandmamma's Christmas Visitors
George Adolphus Storey, Grandmamma's Christmas Visitors, 1873. Sheffield Museums.
A family arrives by coach for Christmas, dressed in the fashions of fifty years before. Storey looks back to the Christmas of Dickens's childhood, with snow on the roofs, a coachman at the door and a little dog dancing in the cold.
Goblins, trees and dancing
In Scandinavia, Christmas mixed the church with older winter traditions: the barn goblin who must be given his porridge, the tree fetched from the forest and the dance round it on Christmas Eve. Some of the best-loved Christmas paintings of all were made there.
10. Goblin with Christmas Porridge
Edvard Munch, Goblin with Christmas Porridge, 1881.
Long before The Scream, a seventeen-year-old Edvard Munch painted the nisse, the little farm goblin of Norwegian folklore, crouched over his Christmas porridge. Families left him a bowl on Christmas Eve; forget, and he would play tricks all year.
11. Felling the Christmas Tree
Hans Andersen Brendekilde, Felling the Christmas Tree, 1885.
A family heads into a wood dusted with snow to fetch its tree. The Danish painter Brendekilde fills the scene with the copper leaves of beech and the dark green of the firs, and the small figures walking in give it the feeling of an expedition.
12. Glade jul (Happy Christmas)
Viggo Johansen, Glade jul (Happy Christmas), 1891. The Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen.
Viggo Johansen painted his own wife and children dancing round the tree on Christmas Eve, the room lit only by its candles. It is one of the most loved Christmas paintings in Scandinavia, and it inspired our Christmas Around the Tree portrait, which places your own family in the same candlelit room.
13. Christmas Delivery
José Frappa, Christmas Delivery, 1894–95.
A winged child pedals across the night sky with a load of toys, a comet trail of light behind the bicycle. In the 1890s the bicycle was the newest wonder in the world, and Frappa simply gave it to the bringer of Christmas gifts. It is the most cheerful picture here.
14. Between Christmas and New Year
Carl Larsson, Between Christmas and New Year (A Home), 1899. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.
Carl Larsson painted his own home at Sundborn, and his watercolours of it, published as A Home in 1899, changed how Swedes decorated their houses. Here, in the quiet days between Christmas and New Year, a mother lifts a child to look at the painted cupboard. It is Christmas at its most peaceful.
Common questions
What is the most famous Christmas painting?
The most famous paintings of the Nativity are by Renaissance masters such as Botticelli, Giotto and Gerard David. For Christmas as a family feast, Viggo Johansen's Glade jul (1891) and the paintings of Carl Larsson are the best loved, especially in Scandinavia.
When did people start painting Christmas trees?
Christmas trees appear in German and Austrian paintings from the early nineteenth century. They became fashionable in Britain and America after 1848, when the Illustrated London News printed a picture of Queen Victoria's family around their tree at Windsor Castle.
What is a nisse?
A small farm goblin from Scandinavian folklore, usually shown with a red cap. Families left him a bowl of porridge on Christmas Eve to keep him happy. Edvard Munch painted one in 1881.
Can I send these paintings as Christmas cards?
Yes. Every painting in this story can open a Christmas card in Fable Cards, printed with your own words inside.
Every painting here is restored from its museum scan and printed to order. To see how these pictures became the first Christmas cards, read The history of the Christmas card. To place your own family in Johansen's candlelit room, start a portrait in Christmas Around the Tree.