Cryoscapes: Time and Season in the Paintings of George Henry Durrie

Between 1850 and 1863, George Henry Durrie painted a number of genre scenes depicting everyday life around his home in New Haven, Connecticut. Durrie distinguished himself by specializing in “snow scenes”: domesticated... [ view full abstract ]

Between 1850 and 1863, George Henry Durrie painted a number of genre scenes depicting everyday life around his home in New Haven, Connecticut. Durrie distinguished himself by specializing in “snow scenes”: domesticated landscapes covered in a picturesque blanket of ice and snow. His work was made famous in American culture as lithographs by the printing firm Currier and Ives. The unique popularity of these winter climate scenes suggests that they spoke more forcefully about the urge to stop time than has previously been granted. Specifically, they are nostalgic landscapes that wish to preserve and even sustain a retrograde period of American history, before the schism of Civil War, before the Frontier closed, before the Golden Spike assured the railroad would eradicate time and space, when a wholesome home life in harmony with the land still seemed tenable. This paper explores this aspect of Durrie’s works by giving them a new name: “cryoscapes,”genre-filled frozen landscapes that seem to call upon the material reality of their subject matter to influence our perception of historical time.