George Henry Durrie

George Henry Durrie was an American painter best remembered for his cozy New England winter scenes. Born in Connecticut in 1820, he painted farmhouses, snowy roads, and horse-drawn sleighs in a plain, warm style that captured rural life in the mid nineteenth century. His work found its widest audience after the printmakers Currier and Ives turned several of his winter farm scenes into popular color prints.

Those prints hung in countless American homes and helped shape the nostalgic image of an old-fashioned snowy Christmas that lingers today. Durrie was not a flashy or ambitious painter, and he worked mostly in and around New Haven, but his affection for country life comes through clearly. His snowbound farms remain some of the most familiar images of early American winter.