Snowbreak, a composition of astonishing condensation is the result of viewing nature in large units, a peak in Hungarian realist painting. Except for the cloudy sky painted after a break of a decade, the picture was accomplished in one hour. It contains the power and outspoken simplicity of its creator. The warm brown of the plough land absorbing winter dampness and preparing for rich crop is unparalleled in 19th century painting. Even painters of Barbizon could not portray naked landscape without any tools.
The symbolic message of Thawing Snow is easy to understand, if one remembers old-fashioned critics tearing modern pictures of Szinyei Merse to pieces: ravens swarm the carcass of a dead animal by a rivulet in the foreground of the picture. Behold, this is the tragic reality, warns the painter spectators, who does not feel like populating nature with beautiful figures. He takes farewell from his youth and accepts the cruelty of life with resignation. As a late revenge, the picture won Szinyei Merse a silver medal at the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris, the capital of art at the time which the master himself visited only once all his life in 1908.