It shows a view from the outskirts of L'Estaque, a small village near Marseille, with a steep hillside covered in a drift of melting snow underneath a foreboding dark grey sky.

"[5] The colors are oppressively dark, while the thickly painted, quick brushwork adds to the urgent violence of the scene.

The hill sweeps down until it rests just above the red roof of a barely visible house at its foot—an effect that art critic Meyer Schapiro described as giving "a rushing force to the image.

"[2] The dark brown trees on the slope's ledge have twisted trunks and rest on unsteady ground, while the trees in the mid-ground are painted in black and form a descending arch which moves inwards towards the centre of the canvas before merging with the ominous overhanging clouds.

Writer Ronald Berman drew comparison between Cézanne's treatment of this landscape and the way Ernest Hemingway imbues the Irati River in Navarre with emotional scope in his 1926 novel on the lost generation, The Sun Also Rises.