Towards the end of her marriage to Christopher Pratt, Mary Pratt increasingly turned to painting as a form of cathartic release, imbuing her domestic subjects with symbolic meaning. Pomegranates, long associated with fertility, sensuality and abundance, had emerged in her work in the mid-1980s. Earlier images show the fruit tightly restrained in a glass bowl, while works from the 1990s on, coinciding with the dissolution of her relationship, depict pomegranates split open, their bleeding juices rendered in vivid detail.

In the last decade of her life, Pratt often revisited the themes that defined her career. Painted in 2010, Snow Light in My House is a masterful later work. Here, the familiar motif takes on an optimistic shift in tone, embodying a sense of peaceful contentment. Pomegranates rest in a glass bowl on a polished wooden table, brilliantly illuminated. The title evokes a clear day after fresh snowfall, sunlight filling the interior with a crisp, radiant glow. Pratt’s ability to capture the effects of light is at its height here, transforming a winter interior into a scene of striking luminosity. In its atmosphere of optimism and abundance, Snow Light in My House presents a vision of domesticity defined by warmth, fulfillment and quiet grace.