George Henry Durrie

George Henry Durrie (June 6, 1820 – October 15, 1863) was an American landscape artist noted especially for his rural winter snow scenes, which became very popular after they were reproduced as lithographic prints by Currier and Ives.

[5] While he was working in Bethany, he stayed with the Wheeler family, and attended services at Christ Episcopal Church, where he became friends with the choir-master, Archibald Abner Perkins.

Around 1844 Durrie began painting water and snow scenes, and took a second place medal at the 1845 New Haven State Fair for two winter landscapes.

He was undoubtedly influenced both by the American Hudson River School, and also by European artists, by studying exhibitions of their work at the New Haven Statehouse, the Trumbull Gallery, and at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, as well as in New York City.

Durrie himself exhibited regularly, both locally, and in New York City at the National Academy of Design and the American Artists’ Union, and his reputation grew.

The popularity of Durrie’s snow scenes received an additional boost in the 1930s, when the Traveler’s Insurance Company began issuing calendars featuring Currier and Ives prints.

[15] Historian Bernard Mergen notes that "84 of the 125 paintings attributed to him are snowscapes, more than enough to make him the most prolific snow scene painter of his time.

The American ideal of a land of self-sufficient farmers, captured by Durrie’s paintings, was being replaced with factories belching smoke, along with a rise in urban populations, foreign immigration, and crime brought about by crowded conditions and poverty.

The American descendants of the early English settlers felt that their values and way of life were threatened by these new developments, and turned to nostalgic images such as Durrie’s for comfort.

[20] In the estimation of art historian Martha Young Hutson, Durrie’s "lack of academic training permitted him to develop an idiomatic style that was peculiarly suited to his theme.