In the context of this artwork, explore the Use of color of the Description and compositional analysis.
Monet's use of color brings the composition together. Art historian and curator Marianne Delafond focuses her analysis of the painting on the smoke that billows from the dark train; she describes the smoke as "belching" outward from the train and blending into the "sky as cold and grey as the snow covering the track." Similarly, literary scholar Marian Robinson describes the smoke as a kind of "bas-relief against the duller sky." However, the smoke is not monochromatic as there are hints of purple within the mist. Other hints of color present within the painting include red and yellow lights emanating from the dark locomotive. The red, focused most intensely at the front of the train, seems to "bloody the snow." The yellow lights, in contrast, are not only brightly painted on the front of the engine, but appear at the vanishing point as well.