George Durrie

George Durrie was a nineteenth-century American painter best known for his winter landscapes, earning him the nickname “the snowman.” Living most of his life in New Haven, Connecticut, Durrie developed a strong reputation for rural New England scenes, particularly snow-covered farms and villages. He began studying art in 1839 with portraitist Nathaniel Jocelyn and traveled throughout Connecticut and New Jersey completing commissions. In addition to landscapes, he painted still lifes, genre scenes, and literary subjects.
Durrie is credited with introducing the snow scene as a popular subject in American painting, discovering that familiar farm landscapes gained emotional appeal and visual unity when blanketed in snow. His carefully observed details of nature and rural life provide an important record of mid-nineteenth-century America. During the 1860s, his imagery closely aligned with the pastoral ideals popularized by Currier and Ives, who reproduced many of his works as hand-colored lithographs. Even after his death in 1863, Durrie’s winter scenes remained widely circulated and admired.