The view from the hill of the parish church skirts over the hospital buildings with the church, once outside the town, and Pirchlhaus in the foreground to the medieval street plan: on the left is the part of town known as Vorderstadt; on the right Hinterstadt. In the centre two rows of houses are huddled closely with the Gothic spire of St. Catherine’s Church. Incorporated in the town walls, a ring of buildings circumscribes the town of Kitzbühel.
The rise and fall of tectonic cubes and spaces dominate this composition. With subtly nuanced shades this almost monochromatic painting comes alive from the combination of black, brown and grey. With bold brushwork Walde has modelled the dense formation of buildings with the heavy masses of snow burdening the roofs, effectively highlighting these with white around the edges. The sombre atmosphere of dusk has been accentuated by the monotony of the colours and an oppressive feeling weighs down on the castle-like structure of this mountain town.
Town in Thawing Snow of c. 1919/20, probably the first version of this subject, is in the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna, followed by this large version on paper and finally the big version on canvas dating from 1927 at Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum in Innsbruck (G. Ammann, Alfons Walde, 5th edn [Innsbruck-Vienna, 2005: 227 and 51]). This painting holds an important position in the artist’s œuvre and after many years in a private collection is once again accessible to the public.