Chicago winters ❄️ are better with a cup of hot coffee in hand. ☕ "The Coffee House" depicts the city on a winter day, with ice floating down the river and the city’s skyscrapers looming through smoke and fog. The State Street Bridge, with its characteristic curving ironwork, draws us into the picture. This scene painted by Alson Skinner Clark is in the tradition of the urban realism of the French Impressionists. Like Monet, Clark sought to suggest both the ephemeral nature of fog and smoke and the atmosphere’s effect upon the forms of the city. See "The Coffee House" (1905/6) on view in Gallery 179.