George Henry Durrie

(1820-1863)

Gathering Wood for Winter 26 1/8 x 36 1/4 in. (66.4 x 92.1 cm.)

Footnotes

Provenance
Norman Bailey Woolworth (1901-1962), Winthrop, Maine, 1959.
Estate of the above.
Coe Kerr Gallery, New York, by 1969. (as Wood for Winter)
William N. Banks, Jr. (1924-2019), Newnan, Georgia, acquired from the above, March 23, 1972.
Estate of the above.
Sale, Brunk Auctions, Asheville, North Carolina, September 12, 2020, lot 87, sold by the above. (as Gathering Wood for Winter, New Haven, 1855)
Acquired by the present owner at the above sale.

Exhibited
Easthampton, New York, Guild Hall Museum, Winter Theme, December 5, 1970-January 2, 1971.
Atlanta, The High Museum of Art, The Beckoning Land: Nature and the American Artist, A Selection of Nineteenth Century Paintings, April 17-June 13, 1971, pp. 24, 54, no. 32, illustrated. (as Wood for Christmas)
New York, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., Forty Masterworks of American Art, October 28-November 14, 1970, p. 33, no. 20, illustrated. (as Landscape with Oxen and Horse)
Hanover, New Hampshire, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Winter, February 1-March 16, 1986, pp. 39, 42, 73, 137, no. 25, illustrated.
Atlanta, The High Museum of Art, Georgia Collects, January 24-March 6, 1989, pp. 66, 203, illustrated.

Literature
K.G. Farnham, "Living with Antiques: The Georgia-Banks House in the Georgia Piedmont," The Magazine Antiques, New York, September 1972, vol. 102, no. 3, p. 445, pl. IX, illustrated.
M.Y. Hutson, "George Henry Durrie, an American Winter Landscape Painter," The Magazine Antiques, New York, February 1973, v. 103, p. 302, fig. 5, illustrated.
M.Y. Hutson, "The American Winter Landscape, 1830-1870," American Art Review, January-February 1975, vol. 2, no. 1, p. 72-73, detail illustrated on the front cover.
M.Y. Hutson, George Henry Durrie (1820-1863): American Winter Landscapist, Renowned Through Currier and Ives, Chester, Connecticut, 1977, pp. 10, 91, 93, 103, 221, 234, fig. 106, no. 159, illustrated.
United Nations, "Designs," Financial Report and Accounts for the year 1978 and Report of the Board of Auditors, General Assembly, Official Records, sess. 34, supp. No.5B (A/34/5/Add.2), 1979, sec. 8, p. 58.
Historic Houses of the South, New York, 1984, p. 136, illustrated.
Harper's Magazine, New York, February 1986, vol. 272, no. 1629, detail illustrated on the front cover.
K. Wheeling, "Winter - The Road: A Panegyric in Art," The Carriage Journal, Salem, New Jersey, Winter 1988, vol. 26, no. 3, p. 126.
W.H. Gerdts, Art Across America: Two Centuries of Regional Painting, 1710-1920, New York, 1990, v. 1, pp. 113-14, 407, no. 1.114, illustrated.

Gathering Wood for Winter is a quintessential example of George Henry Durrie's most celebrated idyllic rural winter scenes inspired by the landscape of his hometown of New Haven, Connecticut and popularized by the lithographic firm Currier & Ives. Born in 1820 the second child of six to John (1792-1857) and Clarissa (née Clark) Durrie (1795-1887) of Hartford, George Henry Durrie began his artistic career at a young age working as a portraitist painting commissions throughout rural Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Virgina. Portrait commissions provided Durrie with a reliable income, but by the late 1840s, he began to shift his focus to landscapes, particularly those of rural Connecticut, and quickly established a name for himself painting scenes of everyday rural life often centered around farmhouses, schoolhouses, country inns, and barnyards.

By the 1850s, Durrie's mature style as a landscape painter was realized, and he began producing the winter scenes that would come to define his career. The period between 1853 and 1857 would be pivotal for Durrie, as Martha Young Hutson-Saxton notes, "Durrie was evolving a favorite subject of the isolated country farmhouse or inn located on a snow-covered road with one or two farmers and/or sleigh approaching or leaving. The road leads the eye diagonally into the picture space. The main building in the mid-ground is flanked by trees, and beyond it lies a distant, hilly background. Sometimes the distant hill is recognizable as New Haven's East or West Rocks. Frequently the profile of the Mount Carmel range (sometimes called the Sleeping Giant) appears, these hills are north of New Haven. Drawing his scenes from the countryside around his home, Durrie probably combined various locations and only occasionally painted an actual homestead." (M.Y. Hutson, George Henry Durrie (1820-1863): American Winter Landscapist, Renowned Through Currier and Ives, Chester, Connecticut, 1977, p. 90) The evolution of Durrie's favored subject and the compositional formula that he found most successful are evident in Gathering Wood for Winter painted in 1855.

In Gathering Wood for Winter, Durrie depicts a red farmhouse with an adjoining barn at center, isolated in the hilly landscape of New Haven. Flanking both sides of the picture plane are intricately designed arrangements of dead trees and frosted-over brush. In the foreground, a farmer leads a horse and two cattle pulling a sled loaded with timber through a snow-covered path. Ahead, two boys emulate the farmer's wholesome, hard work by piling kindling on their toy sled, signaling the teaching of honest, hard work from one generation to the next. Durrie's emphasis on instilling narrative in his winter scenes over accurate topographical representations of place contribute to the work's approachability. Furthermore, while many artists of the Hudson River School concerned themselves with either eliminating the presence of human intervention in nature or showing nature's power over humans, Durrie focused instead on depicting the ways in which nature belonged to man and treated both as an integrated whole.

When discussing the present work, Hutson-Saxton remarked, "There is an ingenious spontaneity about the picture which makes it one of the more delightful paintings from mid-nineteenth century America. The soaring dead tree with its uplifted branches and foliage is as unreal, fanciful and naive as anything one could possibly imagine in a sober New England landscape. Durrie's pleasure in his craft is fully stated here, as well as the youthful exuberance of his personality." (M.Y. Hutson, George Henry Durrie (1820-1863): American Winter Landscapist, Renowned Through Currier and Ives, p. 91) Durrie's mastered technical prowess is on full display in Gathering Wood for Winter, employing delicate, yet spontaneous brushwork as he carefully considered each branch of the trees and mound of snow. Furthermore, Durrie uses a rich color palette associated only with his best winter scenes, imbuing the canvas with a brightness of color that reflects the warmth of his figures that populate the scene.

Gathering Wood for Winter resides prominently alongside Durrie's other most accomplished works that are defined by both their methodical compositional designs and refined attention to detail and atmospheric effects. These works are also distinctly American in their subject matter, often conveying jovial and tranquil moods. At a time when much of America was grappling with the onset of rapid industrialization and coming to terms with a growing, crowded urban landscape, Durrie's winter scenes provided an escape into a simpler, romanticized bucolic way of life that still resonates with viewers of his work.