Winter in the Country

c. 1858

George Henry Durrie

Painter, American, 1820 - 1863

George Henry Durrie

Attributed to

A person and dog trudge through ankle-deep snow to approach a barn and farmhouse under a heavy, lead-gray sky in this horizontal landscape painting. The person has pale-toned skin and wears a brown hat and suit. He carries a sack over one shoulder and a handled basket looped over his other forearm. He walks away from us and to our right so the side of his face is painted with a triangular touch of peach. The dog is mostly brown with some gray spots. The pair approach a break in a stone wall built with light and dark gray boulders. Snow sits in the crooks of branches in barren trees and bushes to the left and right. A short distance away, six cows stand looking off to our left or nuzzle through the snow to find grass. A gray-sided, snow-topped barn is just beyond them to the right of center. More trees and other smaller structures are around and behind the barn. Another stone wall stretches from the right side of the barn and off the right edge of the painting. The main section of the three-story house to the left is butter yellow. A single-story structure jutting off the right side of the house is pale terracotta red. Laundry hangs on a line outside the house, and a person, also wearing brown, stands nearby. On the roofs, the snow is painted white where the low sun falls and mauve-pink where it falls into shadow. The distant horizon, which comes about a third of the way up this composition, is lined with slate-gray hills. A strip of warm yellow light lines the horizon beneath piles of gray clouds that mostly obscure a lavender-blue sky. The artist signed the painting as if he had inscribed a boulder in the lower right corner, “DURRIE N HAVEN.”

Media Options

This object’s media is free and in the public domain. Read our full Open Access policy for images.

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

  • Dimensions

    overall: 45.7 x 61.1 cm (18 x 24 1/16 in.)
    framed: 70.2 x 85.4 x 8.6 cm (27 5/8 x 33 5/8 x 3 3/8 in.)

  • Accession Number

    1994.59.1

More About this Artwork

Video:  Wintertime Art Screensaver

Enjoy relaxing music and a series of wintertime landscapes from the National Gallery of Art's collection.  

Video:  Take a Walk Through George Henry Durrie’s “Winter in the Country”

Join George Henry Durrie's lone figure as he walks through the snow with his trusty dog, a basket over one arm, and a full bag over his shoulder.


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(sale, Sotheby's, New York, 21 April 1977, no. 19); Mr. and Mrs. George J. Arden, New York, until 1988;[1] (Berry-Hill Galleries, Inc., New York); sold November 1988 to Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia; gift 1994 to NGA.
[1] Martha Young Hutson (in George Henry Durrie (1820-1863): American Winter Landscapist Renowned through Currier and Ives, Santa Barbara, California, 1977: 222) lists the painting as being in the collection of the Physicians Planning Service Corporation, of which George Arden was founder and chief executive officer. Mr. Arden died in 1983, and his wife inherited the collection.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1983

  • Nineteenth Century American Paintings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. George J. Arden, The Gallery, Morris R. Williams Center for the Arts, Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, 1983, illus. 7, as New Haven Winter.

Bibliography

1977

  • Hutson, Martha Young. George Henry Durrie (1820-1863): American Winter Landscapist Renowned through Currier and Ives. Exh. cat. 4 venues. Santa Barbara, California, 1977: no. 180, fig. 105, as Winter in the Country, Farmyard (not shown in exh.).

1996

  • Kelly, Franklin, with Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., Deborah Chotner, and John Davis. American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 149-151, color repro.

Inscriptions

lower left: DURRIE / N HAVEN

Wikidata ID

Q20188404


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