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ORGANIZED NOSTALGIA: G.H. DURRIE'S WINTER LANDSCAPES
AND NINETEENTH'CENTURY AMERICAN ART ASSOCIATIONS'
PROMOTION OF A NATIONAL IDENTITY

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ORGANIZED NOSTALGIA
G. H. DURRIE’S WINTER LANDSCAPES AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY
AMERICAN ART ASSOCIATIONS’ PROMOTION OF A NATIONAL IDENTITY
By

Kathryn Elizabeth Sackett

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Master of Arts in History of Art
Department of Art

1999

ABSTRACT
ORGANIZED NOSTALGIA
G. H. DURRIE’S WINTER LANDSCAPES AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY
AMERICAN ART ASSOCIATIONS’ PROMOTION OF A NATIONAL IDENTITY
By

Kathryn Elizabeth Sackett

George Henry Durrie (1820-1863) painted nearly two hundred landscapes as well
as portraits and still lifes throughout his short career. He lived and worked for most of
his life in his hometown of New Haven, Connecticut, selling his paintings of local scenes
in shops and from his studio. Durrie’s sketchbook and diary, as well as newspaper
advertisements, express his concern with appealing to a local clientele. However, like
most artists of his time, he also attempted to expand his audience by exhibiting paintings
in New York. Three organizations played a large role in advancing Durrie’s career from
a local to a regional and eventually to a national level: the National Academy of Design,
the American Art Union, and the Cosmopolitan Art Association. Durrie sold pieces
through these groups from 1843 until his death in 1863.

By analyzing Durrie’s winter landscapes, his exhibition records, and the records
of these three art organizations, Durrie’s progression fi'om local scene painter to
representative painter of national character can be traced. I will Show that, even after
gaining national recognition and being adapted to other media Durrie’s landscapes
retained and promoted regional self-consciousness. Although Durrie’s paintings of rural
New England didn’t change dramatically during his career, the way in which they were

perceived was transformed permanently through institutional promotion.

Copyright by
KATHRYN ELIZABETH SACKE'IT
1999

 

To my parents,
Who have never failed to support me intellectually and emotionally.

And to Pete, for helping me keep my sense of humor.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my committee, Dr. Kenneth Haltman, Dr. Stephen
Rachman, and Dr. Raymond Silverman, for their valuable suggestions and support. I
would also like to thank Sharon Greene, Assistant Curator, and Polly Darnell, Archivist,
at the Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont, and the staff of the Whitney Library in
the New Haven Colony Historical Society. Their thoughtful and generous assistance
during my visit there and their long distance aid made my research much easier and much

more enjoyable.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................... vii-viii
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................. l-3

I.

A NATIVE ARTIST — A LOCAL AUDIENCE .......................................... 4-17
11.

LANDSCAPE PAINTING, REGIONALISM AND NATIONALISM:

THE NATIONAL ART ASSOCIATIONS’ OBJECTIVES .................................... 18-41
III

SENTIMENTALITY AND POPULAR IMAGERY:
NOSTALGIA IN NINETEENTH CENTURY VISUAL CULTURE 42-51

CONCLUSION ................................................................................ 52-53
APPENDIX .............................................................................................................. 55- 80
BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................ 82-85

LIST OF FIGURES

1. George Henry Durrie, John Fisher Throclanorton Forman, 1841, o/c, 30x25”, Private
Collection.

2. George Henry Durrie, Sketch of trees from Durrie ’s Sketchbook, 1838-1844, pencil
on paper, 6 ‘/4 x 9 V2”, New Haven Colony Historical Society.

3. George Henry Durrie, Ithiel Town ’3 Truss Bridge, 1847, o/c, 28% x 35‘/2”, New
Haven Colony Historical Society.

4. George Henry Durrie, East Rock and Covered Bridge, New Haven, Connecticut,
1837, New Haven Colony Historical Society.

5. George Henry Durrie, East Rock, New Haven, 1853, o/c, 17 x 20”, New Haven
Colony Historical Society.

6. George Henry Durrie, West Rock, New Haven, 1853, o/c, 17 x 20”, New Haven
Colony Historical Society.

7. East Rock, New Haven, 1853, lithograph published by Sarony and Company,
dimensions unknown, New York, Private Collection.

8. West Rock, New Haven, 1853, lithograph published by Sarony and Company,
dimensions unknown, New York, Private Collection.

9. Thomas Birch, Winter Scene, 1838, o/c, 19 3A x 29 3/4”, Henry Francis du Pont
Winterthur Museum.

10. George Henry Durrie, Jones Inn, Winter, 1853, o/c, 18 x 24”, The White House
Collection.

11. Francis D’Avignon afler Tompkins H. Matteson, Distribution of the American Art-
Union Prizes, At the Tabernacle — Broadway, New York; 24’” December, 1 84 7, 1847,
lithograph, 19‘/2 x 25”, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

12. George Henry Durrie, SettlingA Bill, 1851, o/c, 20 x 25”, Private Collection.

13. William Sidney Mount, The Dance of the Haymakers, 1845, o/c, 25 x 30”, The
Museums at Stony Brook.

14. William Sidney Mount, The Power of Music, 1847, o/c, 17x21”, Private Collection.

vii

15. George Henry Durrie, Jones Inn, Winter, 1855, o/c, 18 x 24”, Old Print Shop, New
York.

16. George Henry Durrie, Winter Landscape, Gathering Wood, 1859, o/c, 28 x 34%”,
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

17. George Henry Durrie, Gathering Wood, 1859, o/c, 22% x 30”, Shelburne Museum,
Vermont.

18. George Henry Durrie, Winter Scene In New England, 1859, o/c, 18 x 24”, Yale
University Art Gallery.

19. George Henry Durrie, Winter in the Country, A Cold Morning, 1861, o/c, 26 x 36”,
Hirsch] and Adler Galleries, New York City.

20. Anonymous, Winter in the Country, A Cold Morning, lithograph published by Currier
& Ives after 1861 Durrie painting of same title, 1864, 18% x 27 without margins,
Museum of the City of New York.

21. Anonymous, New England Winter Scene, lithograph published by Currier & Ives
after 1858 Durrie painting of same title, 1861, 16 1/2x23 5/8” without margins,
Heritage Plantation of Sandwich.

22. Anonymous, The Farmyard in Winter, lithograph published by Currier & Ives afier
lost Durrie painting, 1861, 16%x23 V2” without margins, Museum of the City of New
York, Harry T. Peters Collection.

23. George Henry Durrie, Winter in the Country, A Cold Morning, 1862, O/c, 26 x 36”,
Webb Gallery, Shelburne Museum.

24. JP Davis & Speer, SC, Illustration on Title Page of 1866 Edition of “Snowbound” by
John Greenleaf Whittier, 2% x 3”.

25. Illustration on page nine, first page of text, 1866 Edition of “Snowbound” by John
Greenleaf Whittier, 3/4 x 3%”.

26. Anonymous, 1998 Christmas Card after Currier & Ives Lithograph, Winter in the
Country, A Cold Morning from 1861.

viii

INTRODUCTION

George Henry Durrie (1820-63) began his artistic career as a portrait painter but
developed an early interest in landscape painting. He Spent most of his professional life
in his hometown, New Haven, Connecticut. Early in his career he painted local natural
landmarks for his friends, locals, and tourists to the New Haven area. These most often
depicted temperate seasons when people would actually be inclined to venture out into
the countryside. Durrie’s Shift in focus to winter landscapes coincided with his initial
involvement in the National Academy of Design exhibitions in New York City. His
paintings, most often of rural winter scenes were similar in composition, with a figure or
figures entering the picture space on a snow-covered path running from the foreground
towards a group of buildings, a farmhouse or inn, deeper in picture space. Other figures
in the outbuildings or the main building itself suggest motion and activity, and therefore
warmth, through the midground. These paintings represented the New England region
topographically, climatically, and architecturally yet were not identifiable with one
particular location. In an attempt to attract a wider range of patrons and appeal to a
broader audience outside of his own region, Durrie appears to have retained a sense of
place without specifying where that place was. In the first section of this paper, I argue
that as his career advanced Durrie adapted his images specifically to appeal to his
broadening audience by switching from depictions of specific locales around his
hometown to more generic paintings of New England scenery. A survey of Durrie’s
early artistic career and an analysis of a number of the paintings completed during this

time support this claim.

It was through Durrie’s involvement with the NAD and subsequently the
American Art Union and Cosmopolitan Art Association that his works progressed from
representing rural New England, to all of New England, and finally came to symbolize a
national ideal to people both within Durrie’s own region and other parts of the country.
Although his painting style did not change greatly over the course of his career, the
promotion of his work through these institutions gradually changed the way in which the
general public perceived them. In section two I survey Durrie’s personal records, his
diary and account book, and the records of the institutions themselves to establish the
relationship between Durrie and these three organizations and the role it played in
shaping his career. The statements rmde by each institution in its respective publication
clearly characterize a common desire to support American art. All three appealed to
essentially the same audiences and artists but chose to do so in a different manner,
building and developing their own ideal notion of American art. Each institution,
through its own general goals, and the way it promoted itself and the art it exhibited,
influenced the way Durrie’s art was marketed and to whom. With their help, by 1863
Durrie’s clientele had expanded from Southern Connecticut to include most of the nation,
and his conventional paintings had become representatives of a national symbolic
identity.

Although Durrie’s reputation as a landscape painter grew over the years, the
popularity of his paintings did not result from his personal appeal as an artist. That
Durrie created the landscapes was in reality peripheral to the reasons they sold, the
nostalgic sentiments that they inspired. This actually allowed him to paint nearly exact

replicas of his most popular pieces, something he did quite ofien, without concern for

originality. When purchasing a work by Durrie patrons were not necessarily looking to
buy an original work by a particular artist; instead they bought a connection to their
childhood, to earlier days, or to a simpler way of life. This longing for simplicity
permeates the literature of the period, exemplified by John Greenleaf Whittier’s
exceptionally popular poem “Snowbound. A Winter Idyll,” first published in 1866.
Whittier’s poem earned him ten thousand dollars in its first edition, an enormous sum at
the time.1 Currier and Ives also popularized the longing for simpler times, and profited
fi-om Durrie’s images in particular. It is, in fact, Currier and Ives prints afier Durrie’s
paintings that essentially constitute his legacy.

In the final section of this paper I explore the last years ofDurrie’s career and the
legacy of his paintings in prints, literature, and literary illustrations. Over the course of
his professional life Durrie’s paintings, with promotional assistance from the art
organizations, came to inspire an illusory sense of regional and national identity that for
many was preferable to reality. Afier his death in 1863 this promotion continued and in
the face of a quickly eroding way of life, brought about by industrialization and amplified
by the Civil War, adapted images in other media continued to serve as enduring visual

representatives of a time when national unity and arnity prevailed.

 

' Robert Penn Warren, John Greenleaf Whittier ’s Poetry: An Appraisal and a Selection (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1971) 47.

I
A NATIVE ARTIST — A LOCAL AUDIENCE

At the time of George Henry Durrie’s birth in 1820, landscape painting in
America was gaining popularity with artists and those involved with the maturing art
market in the United States. Previously, portraiture and history painting had been the
primary genres chosen by artists to represent American ideals, focusing on heroes and
heroic events, the pe0p1e who had helped form the new country.1 Yet as they turned to
landscape imagery painters were doing more than creating national images. Through
depictions of regional scenery they also suggested a demrcation of territories.
Landscape paintings represented the grander, more expansive aspects of the United States
yet also reflected regional individuality. This belief that one’s geographic origins
influenced one’s character affected Durrie and is evident in his diary entries and
paintings. The landscape around New Haven, Connecticut, his birthplace, inspired
Durrie as an individual and as an artist, the natural monuments in the area providing him
with some of his earliest landscape subjects.

Durrie began his painting studies in 1839, at age nineteen, through training and
apprenticeship with an established artist, Nathaniel Jocelyn (1796-1881), a well-known
New Haven portrait and miniature painter.2 The commissioned portraits Durrie produced
during the early years of his career reflect this instruction. Durrie’s record book records

portrait commissions painted between 1839 and 1841 in Bethany, Hartford, Hanover,

 

' On the development of American landscape and genre painting in the nineteenth century and the history
leading up to this development see: Patricia Hills, The Painters ’America, Rural and Urban Life, 1810-
1910. New York: Praeger, 1974.

2 Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, Elizabeth R. McClintock, and Amy Ellis, American Painting Before 1945
in the Wadsworth Athenaeum (Hartford: Wadsworth Athenaeum, 1996) 322.

Naugatuck, and Meriden, Connecticut, as well as in Freehold, New Jersey.3 (Figure 1)
Much of this time was spent on the road but in 1841 Durrie married Sarah Perkins of
Bethany and in 1843 they settled in New Haven. After this Durrie continued to travel to
produce works on commission but, by establishing himself in New Haven, he announced
his intention to acquire a reliable local audience for his work. As a local artist, Durrie
appears to have found willing patrons in coastal Connecticut who were fimiliar with him
and who could purchase his paintings with the added satisfaction of knowing the artist
and his background.4 Durrie began immediately to develop his career in town through
private commissions, sales from his studio and his father’s stationery and bookshop, and
through larger exhibitionss Durrie’s first documented public exhibitions came in 1342
when he showed one portrait at the National Academy of Design in New York City, and
two more at the New Haven Horticultural Society.6 The exhibition at the NAD began a
relationship that was to last on and ofi“ throughout Durrie’s life; it was here at an exhibit
in 1845 that Durrie first exhibited his landscapes to a wide audience. In 1845, however,
Durric was still primarily a painter of commissioned portraits, working in his New Haven
studio at 124 Chapel Street and developing a local clientele.7

In the mid-nineteenth century, New Haven was a small market city. Durrie’s
patrons were primarily townspeople and farmers from outlying areas. Often, they would

call on Durrie in his studio to commission paintings and would visit while work

 

3 George Henry Durrie, Account Book. 12 pages. 1839 to 1852, unpaginated. Manuscript Collection,
Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont.

‘ On Connecticut patronage in an only slightly earlier period, see Whitney Museum of American Art, Ralph
Earl, 1 751-1801. catalogue by William Sawitzky, New York: L. F. White Co., 1945.

5 George Henry Durrie, Personal Diary. Durrie kept his diary m 1845 to 1846, dividing entries by day,
month and year.

6 Kor'nhauser, McClinock and Ellis, American Painting Before I 945 in the Wadsworth Athenaeum 323.

7 Durrie, Personal Diary.

progressed.8 This was typical at this time, especially in smaller communities. And such
personalized relations appear to have helped Durrie to expand his business by word of
mouth. Many of his early commissions were repeat requests made by the same family.
Durrie often, over the course of a few months, painted an entire household individually.9
According to Virgil Barker, where the art market was concerned “the mid-century
situation was more complex and in some ways more advantageous than a lot of pictures
selling on an impersonal market; many of the painters and patrons knew one another, in
some cases quite well, and they agreed both upon what subject matter was interesting,
and upon how it should be treated.”'0

Durrie appreciated and benefited fiom his intimate relationship with his
established portrait patrons, they were the earliest purchasers of works that represented
his genuine artistic interest, landscape painting. Durrie’s taste for landscape, documented
by early sketches of trees and other open-air scenes in his Sketchbook (Figure 2), began to
play an important role in the development of his career in the early 18408. Thomas
Cole’s and Asher B. Durand’s paintings in the 1830s, like the works of other landscape
artists, influenced the visibility and marketability of landscape painting, bringing it
national attention and appreciation. John K. Howat, asserted that by 1842 the public taste
for landscape painting had developed strongly, citing a reviewer of that year’s NAD

exhibition who opined that there were “too many portraits and too few landscapes and

 

8 Durrie, Personal Diary. Illrrie often recorded visits to his studio. In March, April, July, and September
of 1845 he mentioned four male visitors by name, noting that they “called at my room.” He also remarked
on their positive reactions to the paintings he was currently working on, saying, “[they] liked my snowpiece
very much.”

9 Durrie, Account Book. Durrie often listed painting members of one family within a short period. An
example is in May 1844 when he notes painting five members of the John Man's family: Mr. Maris, Mrs.
Maris, Sarah, Mary Anne, and John Jr.

1° Virgil Barker, American Painting: History and Interpretation (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1950)
391.

pieces of historical character.”ll National art journals had also begun to bring attention to
landscape painting through increasing commentary on landscape painting in Europe and
the United States.

The spread of photo portraiture during the 18405 may have also motivated
Durrie’s decision to paint landscapes. Thomas Cummings, treasurer of the National
Academy of Design fi'om 1826 to 1865, seems to have represented a gathering consensus
when he wrote: “Certain it is that history and historic portraiture, and indeed every
branch of history, will receive an extraordinary and impartial, never-beforeobtained
recorder by photography. ”‘2 By the late nineteenth century photographed portraits were
more common than painted portraits. Photography provided Durrie’s primarily middle
class patrons with a quick means to obtain an accurate representation of themselves and
family members without the expense of paying a professional artist. According to
Durrie’s account book, in fact, after 1851 he was rarely called upon to paint portraits at
all.” During this time he focused increasingly on improving his landscape painting
techniques. Durrie first exhibited a landscape, Winter Scene, now lost, at the New Haven
State Fair in 1844 along with five portraits. He won a second-place medal at the State

Fair the following year for two winter landscapes.”

Although portrait painting remained
both popular and lucrative, Durrie, in developing his landscape career, proved an acute
observer of national artistic trends, and in a way, by depicting the daily lives of his

neighbors he invented an alternate form of portraiture.

 

“ John K. Howat, “A Climate for Landscape Painting,” in American Paradise: The World of the Hudson
River School, Exhibition Catalogue (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987) 53.

‘2 Historic Annals of the National Academy of Design (Philadelphia: G. W. Childs, 1865) 310.

'3 Durrie, Account Book. The account book indicates that Durrie painted forty-three portraits in 1847 and
only eleven in 1850.

Although Durrie is not known to have taken any formal landscape painting
lessons, he certainly encountered works by other American artists at local exhibitions.ls
He also appears to have kept up with the works of major American painters. On January
1, 1845, for example, he notes: “went down to Croswell and Jewitt’s this morning. Saw
the portrait of Captain Gregory by Jocelyn -— also some fine prints from Colonel
Trumbull’s pictures.”'° In his own painting Durrie focused on two artistic elements of
interest to many other landscape painters of the time as well: composition and
atmospheric effect. In 1855 and 1856 Asher B. Durand stated his beliefs on the subject in
a series of articles, “Letters on Landscape Painting”, published in The Crayon. He
encouraged beginning artists to paint directly fi'om nature as often as possible. “Take
pencil to paper, not the palette and brushes,” he wrote, “and draw with scrupulous fidelity
the outline or contour of such objects as you shall select... If your subject he a tree,
observe particularly wherein it differs from those of other species...”17 The sketches in
Durrie’s early sketchbooks, noted in his diary as being drawn outdoors, seem to reflect
this belief in gaining inspiration directly fiom nature (Figure 2). Durrie filled his books
with individual pencil sketches of various natural objects and outdoor scenes and
compositions, including many sketches of lone trees, which would become a primary

compositional element used consistently in his work.

 

" Martha Hutson, George Henry Dru-rite (18204863), American Winter Landscath Renowned Through
Currier and Ives (Santa Barbara: American Art Review Press, 1977) 39. Durrie’s teacher, Nathaniel
Jocelyn won the gold medal that year for his portraits

’5 Durrie, Personal Diary. See entry for Jan. 17, 1845 regarding attending an auction of oil paintings,
“mostly painted in New York, and sold on an average at 4 and 5 dollars apiece, without the frame.”

’6 Durrie, Personal Diary.

'7 Asher B. Durand, ‘Letters on Landscape Painting”, The Crayon (Jan. 17, 1855) 34. In his Letters
Durand frequently asserted drawing’s “vital importance” to successful landscape painting

According to his account book, Durrie began selling landscapes to local patrons
around 1843, when he recorded, on 14 October, receiving a total of twenty dollars fi'orn
Mrs. Horace Daggett for a portrait, a miniature, and a landscape. He didn’t sell another
landscape until nearly a year later when one went, again to the Daggett family, for seven
dollars. '8 Perhaps keeping this local market in mind, Durrie’s earliest landscapes
depicted local scenes. As he found himself painting landscapes for patrons already
purchasing portraits from him, certainly this played a role in his decision to paint scenes
these patrons would themselves see on a regular basis.

Ithiel Town ’s Truss Bridge of 1847 (Figure 3) depicts an autumn scene featuring
the bridge that led to Eli Whitney’s gun factory. The composition of the painting is
divided into three distinct areas. A red earth path sweeps fi'om the right of the painting
down into the immediate foreground marked by a border of trees and indistinct
underbrush beyond. Rust and gold autumn foliage in the midground flames the bridge,
the factory, and a shining lake on which two men row a small boat. East Rock rises
directly behind in the left distance, the space between it and a single tree in the right
foreground forming a valley in the right distance. The composition is awkward; the road
seems to dip at an odd angle toward the foreground, depicting either a slope or Simply a
bend in the road. The small building alongside the road also lists and does not appear
settled on the ground. The figures along the road, indistinct, seem more like practice

elements, sketches, than integral parts of the composition.

 

18Durrie, Account Book The Daggett family paid tel dollars for the portrait and five dollars apiece for the
miniature and the landscape painting. This also seens to reflect the ongoing preference for portraits over
other genes.

Yet Durrie’s awkward, early attempts at landscape painting appear to have
appealed to locals. It was not necessary for Durrie to represent scenes accurately or
elegantly so long as they were recognizable. Because Durrie depicted places well known
to his patrons he did not need to create an exact rendering of a scene, but only a realistic
setting, the purchaser’s familiarity with and direct knowledge of what was represented
filled in for compositional deficiencies. Just as portrait patrons accepted even amateur
work because they were familiar with the appearance of the subject and recognized the
likeness, Durrie’s early landscapes were “likenesses” of familiar locations.

In addition, the coloring of the works was appealing, and would have provided
bright decoration in a home. For example, the brilliant colors of the foliage and the
distinctive Shade of the earth in Ithiel Town ’s Truss Bridge contrast with the crisp, light,
warm-toned atmosphere of the sky, which makes up the upper quarter of the composition.
This awkward arrangement does not necessarily reflect a lack of interest on Durrie’s part
in “correct” compositional elements. A small sketch of the same scene from 1837
(Figure 4) completed ten years prior to the painting, indicates that he worked studiously
at revising and perfecting his landscapes, sometimes over long periods of time. The
pencil sketch depicts the bridge, the factory, and surrounding scenery yet closer to the
picture plane, while the painted version is more panoramic. Durrie recorded his daily
drawing and painting excursions around New Haven in his diary, which also reflects the
intense focus he put upon improving his skills. On May 15, 1845, for example, his diary
reads: “Took a sketch of East Rock...” Two days later Durrie noted: “Have painted all

day on East Rock scene.” And on May 19: “ I went down by the boat and made

10

observations on East Rock. . .”'9 This record of daily work suggests that it was customary
for We to scrutinize and improve compositions over an extended period of time.

Over the next few years Durrie produced more and more local landscapes,
exhibiting and selling them along with an ever-diminishing number of portraits. Many of
these feature either East or West Rock. At this time the success of this subject matter had
been established by Frederic Edwin Church when he exhibited the highly acclaimed,
career-making Haying New Haven, West Rock at the National Academy of Design in
1849. It seems that Durrie felt his depictions of the New Haven landmarks might also be
successful with a wider audience. In December 1847 he mentions a painting entitled East
Rock in his account book, noting that he sent it to the Art Union in New York. Again in
1848 and then again in 1849 he mentions sending views of East Rock to the Art Union.

Between 1847 and 1853, in fact Durrie records selling a total of seven paintings
of East Rock and five paintings of West Rock at prices varying from fifteen dollars in
1848 to forty and sixty dollars in 1853.20 Some of these painting are now missing, but
they all probably resembled East Rock, New Haven (Figure 5) and West Rock, New
Haven (Figure 6), both from 1853. The composition of the former image places the large
outcropping with its sheer, rust colored wall directly in the middle of picture space,
splitting the composition in half horizontally. East Rock rises up against a pale blue Sky,
dividing the composition vertically as well. A large, lone tree in the right foreground

rises up into the Sky, its green branches echoing the movement of the lavender clouds

 

'9 Dm'rie, Personal Diary. Durrie’s daily entries often include more detailed information on routine habits
and social activities than his work habits. Whel he does include work information it is usually very
specific, concerning details about whee he worked when and is theefore hard to place in the large context
of his career. Although some information can be gatheed from the diary about his career overall, it seems
to have been primarily a means of recording his daily life and personal reflections.

2° Durrie, Account Book. Many of the paintings Durrie mentions in his account book are either
unaccounted for or in private collections.

11

from right to left and contrasting with the tone of the sky. Indistinct figures in the
foreground appear to pause in their business of haying, while in the shallow midground
smaller figures travel along a road and over a bridge running parallel to East Rock. The
coloring of the landscape relies primarily on Shades of pastel green.

The composition of West Rock, New Haven closely resembles that of East Rock,
New Haven. West Rock rises in the midground, splitting the composition in two halves.
However, a wide road leads directly back into picture Space, figures and an ox-drawn
wagon leading the eye into the midground. The road winds around a bend to the left in
the distant midground and white houses, a factory chimney, and church steeple appear
hazily outlined at the foot of the rock. The sky is Shades of lavender and pale blue, and
again to the right of picture space a lone tree rises up fi‘om a fenced hillside. Extant
variants on these scenes resemble these versions in composition, vantage, and even in
foreground elements such as figures. These paintings represent some of the earliest
examples of Durrie’s technique of reworking a composition, painting many variations of
Similar scenes, often changing only minute details.

By 1853 it seems Durrie could create these images easily and quickly for an
established market. That same year he had the two paintings we lmve been looking at
lithographed (Figures 7 & 8) to sell to an even larger audience, to locals who could not
afford his paintings and perhaps to tourists passing through New Haven who wanted an
inexpensive yet distinctive memento of their visit. Durrie placed an advertisement in the
New Haven Palladium not only promoting the prints but also attempting to inspire a

sense of local pride:

12

East and West Rock — Every admirer of New Haven scenery is particularly struck
by the boldness and beauty of the two mountain bluffs, “East and West Rock,”
which stand like sentinels on either Side of this highly favored city. They are the
first objects of interest that strike the eye on approaching the city, and are looked
upon by every New Havener with feelings of pride and satisfaction. What
pleasure, then, would it not afford every citizen of New Haven, whether at home
or abroad, to possess beautiful and perfect facsimiles of those charming spots.
The subscriber has succeeded at great expense and labor, in obtaining two very
fine tinted Lithographs, by the best French Artists in New York, fiom paintings
taken on the spot by himself; and in order more fully to meet the cost of
completing the work, offers them to his fi'iends and the public by subscription,
and trusts that a discriminating public will appreciate his endeavors to produce
pictures worthy of himself and his native city.21
Durrie’s confidence in his friends’ and the public’s artistic taste was not matched by their
enthusiasm for his work. He seems to have not had much success selling the lithographs
as he had a large number of them in his possession at his death years later. Durrie
continued to paint scenes of East and West Rock from different angles and in different
seasons as well as other scenes set in and around New Haven. 22
By the early 18508 Durrie had chosen to focus primarily on winter landscapes
which appear to have interested him for many reasons, one of the most significant of
which was his simple love of winter. He often recounted anecdotes about winter (and
sleighing especially) in his diary. For instance, in January of 1845 Durrie wrote about
sleighing on two consecutive days, on the latter of which he wrote: “Today the weather
has been beautiful and the sleighs have been constantly on the move, making the scene

very animated.23 Durrie, as these words make clear, did not see winter as a time of

stillness and dormancy. He enjoyed the season personally; inspiration for his winter

 

2' New Haven Palladium, Wednesday, 22 Mar. 1854. The prices Durrie asked for these lithographs are not
known.

22 Hutson, George Henry Durrie 46.

’3 Dtnrie, Personal Diary. Durrie noted on the 23rd, “Went to Uncle Don’s shop this evening. Discussed
the subject of sleighing theoughly.”

l3

scenes came both from his personal life and the seasonal activities of friends and
neighbors.
Durrie fastidiously attempted to make his landscape paintings known to his New
Haven audience. In 1845 he began hanging works in local shops, and soliciting opinions
fi'om regular patrons, who appear to have encouraged this new artistic focus.“ However,
Durrie’s greatest support came from a local newspaper, The New Haven Palladium. In
the edition of 17 March, 1845 Durrie received an especially generous review:
A beautiful Oil Painting, by G. Durrie, may be seen in the store window of
Messrs. Crosley & Humaston. It is a winter scene — a sleighing party just arrived
at an old-fashioned country tavern. A man with a respectable imagination could
keep cool and comfortable by looking at that picture in a July day with the
thermometer at 94; it is so true to life and nature. It is for sale. Mr. Durrie is an
artist of great promise.25
Durrie mentioned this review in his diary that same evening, noting that “The Palladium
puffed my snow piece very well tonight.”26 Over the course of 1845 he mentioned more
encouraging comments made by patrons and the newspaper and continued to display his
paintings in local Shop windows. In 1846 he noted receiving “puffs” in The Republican
and the Intelligencer but does not indicate which paintings were reviewed.” This
encouragement appears to have motivated him to continue to expand his landscape
repertoire. It did not pay the bills, however. Despite Durrie’s enthusiasm for painting

winter scenes, this transitional period was not a financially smooth one. On September

23, 1845 he confided to his diary: “Ellis called for his rent this am. I mamged to get

 

2’ Durrie, Personal Diary. On March 12, 1845 Durrie noted, “Put my snow piece in Crosley &
Humaston’s window this aftenoon. It attracted considerable attertion.” The following day he noted, “went
with Mr. Gabriel to my room. He liked the Snow Piece much. H. Flagg called in soon, he also liked it
much — advised to send it to the exhibition.” Here Dun'ie probably referred to the National Academy of
Design exhibition.

2’ New Haven Palladium, 17 Mar. 1845.

2‘ Durrie, Personal Diary.

2’ Durrie, Personal Diary. 4 Mar. 1846, 10 June 1846, ll June 1846.

14

some money of Father to pay him”28 Even so, these difficulties did not We Durrie
excessively; he rarely mentioned details concerning his artistic successes and failures in
his diary, and when he did do so not in great detail. His writings focus much more on
drawing, painting, and time spent with his family. By 1847 Durrie was selling a few
landscapes a year to local patrons whom he mentions by name in his account book. Most
often the paintings were referred to either as “landscapes” or “snow scenes?”
In addition to his patrons’ influence, paintings by more established winter
landscape artists such as Jasper F. Cropsey, Thomas Doughty, and Régis Francois
Gignoux, exhibiting publicly in the mid- 18508, also affected Durrie’s winter landscape
painting style as his interest in the genre increased. He learned and developed many of
his winter landscape painting techniques fi'om these artists’ examples. One of the first
winter landscape painters working and exhibiting in New England professionally was
Thomas Birch (1779-1851) who was born in England but moved to Philadelphia in 1794
and painted there until his death. Birch was at the height of his career in the 18308 and
18405 as Durrie’s interest in winter landscapes increased. 3° He exhibited paintings
regularly throughout New England at various venues including the National Academy of
Design (1832-1845) and American Art Union (1838-1850).“ It is likely that Durrie saw
paintings by Birch on his early portrait commission trips and his occasional visits to New

York City. 32 The two artists used many Similar compositional devices, such as placing

 

2' Durrie, Personal Diary. Durrie would never be well off financially and ironically it was just at the time
of his death in 1863 that his works were beginning to sell widely for appreciable prices.

29 Durrie, Account Book

3° Hutson, George Henry Durrie 63.

3' George C. Croce and David H. Wallace, The New York Historical Society ’s Dictionary of Artists in
America, 1 854-1860 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957) 51.

15

specific elements in particular places within picture space, a lone tree in the right or left
foreground, or a fallen trunk angling from the foreground into picture space to lead the
viewer’s eye through the composition, and including figures in their images often
sleighing, walking, or working. For example, in landscapes like Winter Scene, 1838
(Figure 9), Birch uses figures traversing a road leading fi'om the foreground back into
picture space in this fashion. The figures’ movement breaks the quiet of the rural
countryside, animating the tranquil scene. Although Durrie also used this device in many
of his landscapes, it worked most effectively perhaps in his winter scenes when his intent
was to lead the viewer not to a distant natural monument but to a welcoming farmyard or
inn. No existing record definitively states Birch’s artistic influence on Durrie’s
compositiornl techniques but the similarities that exist in the fimdamental ways both
artists painted winter scenes suggest an awareness of Birch’s work on Durrie’s part.
Birch exhibited at the NAD and the AAU, the same organizations where Durrie was
beginning to exhibit.

As we have seen, the first ten years of Durrie’s professional career were spent in a
gradual shift fi'om portraiture to landscape, improving his skills and adapting the
deliberate and precise techniques of the day’s most successful American artists to his
own interests, while at the same time marketing his paintings to an expanding local
audience. Durrie’s long-term involvement with national art associations, to be discussed
in depth in the next section, began in 1842 when he made his first attempt to appeal to a

more regional, cosmopolitan audience, sending his landscapes to the NAD in New York

 

3’ Martha Hutson briefly mentions similarities between Birch and Durrie, but focuses on the differences in
the two artists’ styles, especially their approach to their color palettes and figure depiction. However I feel
that the importance of the lone tree in Durrie’s paintings over the course of his caree, in addition to othe
similar elements, reflects not only an significant common tie between the two artists but also a connection

16

City. Over the next twenty years these institutions shaped the public’s perception of
Durrie’s winter landscapes, transforming his paintings fi'om seasonal scenes into

representatives of New England values.

 

amongst many landscape painters working at this time. See Ashe B. Durand, “Letters on Landscape
Painting”, The Crayon (Jan. 17, 1855): 34; Hutson, George Henry Durrie 65-66.

17

H
LANDSCAPE PAINTING, REGIONALISM AND NATIONALISM
THE AMERICAN ART ASSOCIATIONS’ OBJECTIVES

By the mid-18003 public interest in American art was widespread throughout the
eastern United States. Exhibitions sponsored by the National Academy of Design and the
American Art Union provided entertainment and social interaction in addition to cultural
instruction, encouraging people to become more familiar with American artistic
production. Magazines and books concerning art and aesthetics were popular as well,
providing information about contemporary artists in both the United States and Europe.33
Art organizations and publications were playing an ever-increasing role in peoples’ daily
lives, especially in the cities.

At the same time landscape painting as we have seen, was becoming the focal
point of American art. Publications such as The Home Book of the Picturesque, a popular
art book published in 1851, contained essays by a number of authors, each of whom
wrote about a particular region or city.” Not only did these publications point out
various aspects of American scenery, the quality of the scenery itself was also a topic for
commentary and evaluation. Tourists and artists alike were actively encouraged to search
out certain geographic locales.35 These publications inspired people to familiarize
themselves with and to explore the regions beyond their own town, and also increased the

general awareness of the types of land and natural monuments that represented their

 

33 Examples of these include The Crayon and The Home Book of the Picturesque New York: G.P. Putnam,
1851.

3’ J. Fenimore Cooper, “American and European Sceney,” in The Home Book of the Picturesque (New
York: G.P. Putnam, 1851) 60. Durrie’s hometown was the subject of some of the articles. In this essay J.F.
Coupe commented, “A great improvement, however, in rural as well as in town architecture is now in the
course of introduction throughout all the northen states" We should particularize New Haven, as one of
those towns that has been thus embellished of late years,”

3’ Hutson, George Henry Durrie 124.

18

region, creating an awareness of the natural appeal of where they lived and pride in its
geographical attributes.

This sense of personal connection to one’s region, supported and promoted by
various publications, began to influence the way which people viewed others and
themselves. E.L. Magoon, in his essay “ Scenery and the Mind,” first published in The
Home Book of the Picturesque, claimed that “the physical and moral traits of nations are
in a great measure influenced by their local position, circumstances of climate, popular
traditions, and the scenery in the midst of which they arise.”36 In the case ofthe rapidly
expanding United States, this applied to the regions that made up the nation as well.
While the statement alluded to the common bond between all inhabitants of the country,
it also called attention to the distinct differences between diverse geographic areas
nationwide and within smaller regions.

As this collective consciousness was established, a connection between regions
and the arts was also made. Magoon goes on to state: “In a fine picture, as in a favorite
book, it is easy to identify what we behold with the life of the author; and probably we
shall trace his first impressions in the peculiarity of his style as well as in the general
tenor of his thoughts.37 The belief that an artist’s or writer’s depictions could be
connected directly to their upbringing and origin easily developed into the belief that an
artist’s impressions reflected not only their personal observations but also the outlook of
the people native of the areas illustrated. The authors and publishers using their
publications to call attention to the connection between landscape and art believed artists

served as representatives of particular parts of the country and the paintings they created

 

3‘ E.L. Magoon, “Scenery and the Mind” in The Home Book ofthe Picturesque , 26.
37 Magoon, “Scenery and the Mind” 41.

19

depicted not only scenery but also a way of life, associated with a specific population. A
developing sense of individual and regional pride in the land and land ownership made
the distinction between eastemer and westerner, merchant and farmer more significant.38
Therefore, it was generally believed that the works of an artist fi'om a particular region
would naturally engage others fiom that same region more because of their common
geographic background. Artists and the members of the art organizations believed in this
relationship between person and place and put it to use, targeting particular regional
audiences and encouraging regional associations to appeal to prospective patrons. Early
in his career Durrie marketed his winter landscapes specifically to his fellow rural New
Englanders, relying on their common surroundings as a way to draw patrons.

While exploiting such connections could benefit an artist’s career it could also be
detrimental, limiting patronage and wider appeal due to a narrowness of subject matter.
Durrie’s audience was the “Yankee farmer,” who “was conceived of as ingenious and
constantly engaged in the thrifty domestic manufacture of most of the things he
needed.”39 His scenes of farmyards, rural inns and country lanes, like Jones Inn, Winter
of 1853 (Figure 10) represented and referred to the daily lives of the Yankee farmer, and
his perceived sensible, humble way of life.40 In the painting we see a man driving a

sleigh drawn by a single horse pull into the courtyard of the inn just as another figure

 

3’ Hermann Wame Williams, Mirror to the American Past (Greenwich: New York Graphic Society,
1973) 60.

39 James Vance, Jr., The Making of the American Landscape, ed. Michael Conzen (Boston: Unwin
Hyman, 1990) 212. This idea of the Yankee farmer, while it seemed to represent the ideals of New
England at the time, thrifty, moral, optimistic and practical, was quite renoved from the cosmopolitan art
world blossoming in New York City. Perhaps this is why Durrie had a difficult time initially selling his
winte scenes in New York and focused on New Haven instead. Unlike the farmers who could relate to but
could not always afford his paintings, patrons living in urban areas did not feel much of a bond to such
simple scenes.

‘0 For more on representations of various groups of people in the nineteenth century see Elizabeth Johns,
American Genre Painting: the Politics of Everyday Life New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.

20

bringing wood on an oxen-drawn sleigh approaches the side door of the inn where a
second man standing in the doorway greets him. A faint wisp of smoke rises fiom the
chimney but the inn itself, and the atmosphere of the painting, seem very still. Off to the
right the barn doors stand open. A large lone tree flames the left side of the scene and
casts shadows over the foreground, drawing the viewer’s eyes to the sheltered courtyard
and the few faded sleigh tracks and footprints converging there, and then disappearing
over a hill. Although the daily lives of Durrie’s intended audience provided subject
matter for his paintings and they were the focus of his marketing techniques, apparently
his early patrons alone were not able to support him financially and he soon began
attempting to appeal to a broader audience.

Durrie, like other artists of his day, seems to have realized that in order to sell
paintings he had to turn to a more art-focused audience. Although some of the more
populated towns throughout New England, such as New Haven, were beginning to attract
a large number of visitors to their art exhibitions, they still did not encourage an extensive
art market.41 However, such an audience was not that far away - the distance between
New Haven and New York City was only eighty miles, an easy journey by train. Durrie
would have been aware of the growing interest in the art academics and unions there as
he kept abreast of artistic matters in the larger cities.42 In The Artist in American Society,
Neil Harris suggests that during the first half of the nineteenth century it was easier to
view art in New York than anywhere else in the country. The NAD held the best-known
exhibitions in the United States. But its Annual Exhibition was not the only venue where

people could view art. Other art associations luld begun holding annual exhibitions and

 

‘1 Neil Harris, TheArtist in American Society, The Formative Years 1790-1860 (New York: George
Braziller, 1966) 255.

21

shows by the 18308. ’3 Besides simply exposing the public to American and European
artists, the goal of most exhibitions in New York was financial gain. Visitors were
encouraged to express their appreciation not only through their admiration but also
through support of the organization itself. This rise in the number of art organizations
brought about a shift in the way art came into peoples’ lives, more accessible and
immediate, and so changed the way New York City residents and the people living in the
surrounding areas thought of art. This in turn proved beneficial for artists in search of
patronage, making their work much more accessible to a larger and more interested
audience.

In analyzing the role art organizations played in Durrie’s career it will be helpful
to consider the history of the two New York art associations with the greatest influence
on art exhibitions and sales in the period, the National Academy of Design and the
American Art Union. The art organizations’ shift from a purely academic focus,
reflecting European art academics, to a commercial and public focus mirrored the
changing art purchaser appearing in the United States. By the mid-18503 patrons were
often merchants and entrepreneurs. When these prosperous patrons, who could afford to
indulge their taste for art, purchased works it was often to acquire or to expand a
collection. The American art associations catered to a different audience than their

European counterparts and adjusted their organizations accordingly.

 

‘2 See #12 above.

‘3 Harris, The Artist in American Society, The Formative Years 1 790-1860 262 By mid- nineteenth
century the NAD, founded in 1826, had been holding its annual exhibit for twenty-five years. Harris
records that in 1858, (this was after Durrie’s career was becoming more successful on a national level),
nearly seven thousand people paid 25 cents apiece to see a great exhibition in New Haven. He does not say
whose works were shown thee or who sponsored the exhibit. However, while this demonstrates that
inteest in art was spreading, it does not provide any information about the success art sales had at these
exhibits outside of New York.

22

The first radical event in the history of the American art organizations was the
creation of the NAD in1826 in reaction to the structuring of the American Academy of
the Fine Arts, a school for art students founded in 1802. The American Academy began
as a place for artists to learn skills and to develop professionalism. It was closely
modeled after the Royal Academy in England and focused on educating artists through
exposure to exhibitions, a library collection, and lecture series. John Trumbull served as
the Academy’s president for many years and his vision directed its organization.“ While
the Academy provided an artistic education it did not support artists financially and in the
United States this traditional system, which depended upon private patronage, simply did
not work. Trumbull refirsed to adapt the American Academy to the new situation
however, and eventually younger artists rebelled. The failure of the old American
Academy to assist students led directly to the founding of the NAD the following year.45

The NAD was instituted on January 19, 1826 in New York City. The constitution
stated the organization’s objective to be “the cultivation and extension of the Arts of
Design” its funds to be “employed in promoting that object.” Members divided into three
classes: Academicians, Associates, and Honorary Members were nominated and voted in
at the Annual Meeting in May. Academicians were selected from resident professional
artists, Associates were selected from resident amateur artists only, and Honorary

Members fiom professional artists, amateurs and “lovers of the arts” who lived outside of

 

“ Theodore Sizer, ”The American Academy of Fine Arts” Introduction to Mary Bartlett Cowdry, The
American Academy of Fine Arts and the American Art Union 1816-1852 (New York: New York State
Historical Society, 1953) 4—5.

’5 Cowdry, The American Academy of Fine Arts and the American Art Union [816.1852 x. Trumbull was
a student of Benjamin West, president of the Royal Academy fi'om 1792 to 1820; it was natural that he
looked to the Royal Academy as a model. However, Cowdry believes his seemingly unreasonable
stubbornness concerning American Academy organization actually attests to Tnnnbull’s faith in the
American Academy as a counterpart to the Royal Academy. Even so, the younger artists could not support
an institution that did not support them and the American Academy of Fine Arts dissolved in April 1839.

23

New York.“ As Durrie never recorded his status in the NAD in his journal or exhibition
records it is possible he never oflicially joined. Academy exhibitions regularly included
more non-members than members; often as many as seventy to eighty percent of the
exhibitors were not members of the Academy.47 But regardless of whether one was a
member or not, the NAD provided an excellent opportunity for young artists to gain
exposure to larger, more cosmopolitan audiences.

Despite its desire to improve upon the job done by its predecessor, the NAD
followed some of the more traditional organizational aspects of the American Academy:
establishing an art school, a Library Fund, and a Fellowship Fund to earn money for
building and sustaining the schools. One hundred-dollar subscribers to the fund became
lifelong members, received season tickets to the Annual Exhibition, access to the Library,
and could nominate two students for entrance into the Academy who, if accepted, would
attend {ice of charge.48 But despite all of the NAD’s other interests, its focal point, its
largest profits, and its main means of interaction with the general public was the Annual
Exhibition which took place in New York City, opening in early April, usually running
two to three months. The only rules for eligibility was that the artist was still living and
that, once a work was publicly exhibited at the Exhibition, it could not be exhibited there
again. The organizing Committee for each year reviewed the works submitted and
selected those to be displayed.49 Artists who did not live in the New York area were

responsible for transporting their work to and from the Academy.

 

‘6 Constitution ofthe National Academy ofDesign (New York: Sackett & Cobb, 1865) 5.

’7 Lois Marie Fink and Joshua Taylor, Academy: The Academic Tradition in American Art (Washington
DC: Smithsonian Press, 1973) 42.

“ Constitution ofthe National Academy ofDesign r r.

‘9 Comtitution d the National Academy of Design 10.

24

In addition to its structure, the NAD also still retained many of the earlier
organization’s conservative beliefs and disapproved of art becoming an industry. So
while it provided an exhibition venue for American artists, it did not actively encourage
sales of art exhibited through the lottery systems that were becoming more and more
popular with other art organizations. Thomas Cummings, long-time secretary of the
NAD, spoke for his fellow members when he wrote: “art, to be successfirl, should be of
natural, nor artificial growth — should be let alone, like other trades, to be governed by the
rules of supply and demand. If too highly stimulated, it necessarily finds a correspondent
reaction.”50 The NAD, although more progressive than the American Academy of Fine
Arts, was determined to protect a certain attitude of reverence towards art and artists.

The NAD exhibitions provided entertainment and social interaction for a twenty-
five cents admission fee. Regular reviews in New York newspapers and popular
magazines including the New York Times, New York Herald, The Crayon, Knickerbocker
Magazine, Putnam ’3, North American Review, and Harper ’s, as well as other art
organization journals, encouraged anticipation, advising which artworks were not to be
missed and those to avoids ' As a part of the public’s daily lives, the newspapers and
magazines made art more accessible and motivated the public to attend the exhibits and
develop an interest in art, in turn fiirther fueling the art rmrket.

But despite the NAD’s initial popularity, because of its aversion to increased

commercial involvement it began to flounder financially by the early 1840s.52 Once a

 

5° Historic Annals of the National Academy of Design (Philadelphia: G.W. Childs, 1865) 149. The book
records twenty years of NAD transactions, containing factual data concerning the National Academy, as
well as Cummings’ personal insight and opinions concerning the art market in New York at this time.

5‘ Fink and Taylor, Academy 42.

’2 Historic Annals of the National Academy of Design 169. Cmnmings recorded some problems with the
Commercial Bank, where the Academy was keeping its funds in October of 1841. The bank had for some

25

person gave money to the Fellowship Fund and became a lifelong member, there was no
reason to do so again, and non-member artists continued exhibiting their works without
penalty. The greatest contribution to the organization’s financial problems however was
competition fiom its rival, the American Art Union, formed in 1839. The NAD was very
aware of the threat the AAU posed and counteracted it by increasing the number of works
by well-known artists at its exhibition. In 1843 it exhibited Thomas Cole’s duplicates of
his Voyage of Life Series calculating that his paintings would be sure to draw a crowd.
However, Cummings records tint the exhibition failed to cover its expenses.53
Nevertheless, despite the institution’s developing dilemma and the difficult years to
come, it continued recruiting well-known artists and the Annual Exhibition remained one
of the best places to see contemporary American art throughout the nineteenth century.
Durrie exhibited at the NAD Exhibition for the first time in 1843, submitting a
Portrait of a Gentleman, now lost. Attesting to the amount of local exposure he received
at this time, as well as to his long-standing popularity within his own community, the
following year he exhibited five portraits and one winter scene, most already privately
owned, at the State House in New Haven. In 1845 Durrie submitted Sleighing Party, also
lost, to the NAD Exhibition.54 He wrote a number of times about the work in his diary,
the first time on April 25"“ exclaiming: “Jocelyn came up fi'om New York today -— said he

saw my snow pig; in the Exhibition — he and Cole looked at it together. Cole made

 

reason “locked up” the funds and ally disbursed them in installments. He recorded that although “no
ultimate loss was sustained, [the locking of funds] was a serious inconvenience.”

’3 Historic Annals of the National Academy of Design 176.

5‘ Hutson, George Henry Durrie 197. While the basic facts of Durrie’s exhibition history come fi’om
Hutson’s book, the details of the painting titles, prices, and the owners’ names, when available, are the
compilation of research into Durrie’s personal records, and the records of the Academy itself. Durrie also
exhibited two winter landscapes and Head of Falstcflr in New Haven in 1845 at the New Haven
Horticultural Society, New Haven State Fair. He won second prize for landscape.

26

some favorable observations concerning an” This is the most animated Durrie ever
seemed to be in his writings. It is also the only time his words suggest Open admiration
for another artist. Writing about the exhibit again, just a few weeks later, he only
remarked: “Father got back from New York this noon. He went into the exhibition while
there.”6 While his earlier comments suggest an awareness of the amount of exposure
his painting received, it is not apparent whether he was really concerned about how it was
received, or whether Durrie actually went to see the exhibit for himself. The last time he
mentioned the exhibition on July 12 he noted: “Received my snow piece fi'om New York
this p.m.”57 Although he eventually returned, this was the last year that Durrie exhibited
at the NAD Exhibition for quite some time. While the NAD helped Durrie present his art
before a larger group, this audience still consisted primarily of regional patrons. The
NAD couldn’t compete with the appeal of the AAU, which promoted itselfand the
artwork it displayed as the true representatives of national art. Although Durrie
continued to exhibit in New Haven, like many other artists he quit exhibiting at the NAD
Exhibition and began submitting paintings to the AAU.

The next eight years continued to be difficult for the NAD as the AAU’s success
grew and its own revenue fell. In 1849 Cummings wrote in his Annual Meeting notes:

“If there be any available means to counteract this evil, in addition to the
attraction of our Exhibition, they may perhaps be found in the adoption of
measures corresponding with those that have produced it - that is, the

incorporation of the Art Union principle into the structure of the Academy. It is
reconnnended on the grounds that it is polite, and indeed imperative, to adapt our

 

’5 Durrie, Personal Diary. The underlining and punctuation used in this passage contradict the tone
Durrie’s musings usually take. While he sought out and appreciated approval of his painting fiorn friends,
neighbors, and the local newspapers, this level of excitement concerning his work seems to have been rare
for him.

’6 Durrie, Personal Diary. my 10, 1845.

’7 Durrie, Personal Diary. Durrie doesn’t seem to have had any luck finding a buyer for his painting while
it was in New York It is not known what happened to the painting.

27

movements, as far as consistent, to the habits and susceptibilities of the
community.”58

Cummings refers to the AAU’s lottery system, set up in order to sell its exhibited
paintings. Through this system, people bought into the lottery and at the end of the
exhibition the works were awarded randomly to people who had purchased lots. This
method of selling and purchasing art contradicted everything the NAD wished to
preserve. While it cultivated art sales, it did not encourage artists to create art for the
sake of their craft, and it did not require any knowledge or appreciation on the part of the
art purchasers. However, the opportunity for prize winning appealed to people, attracting
hundreds to the Union’s galleries and rapidly generating greater success and revenue for
the AAU (Figure 11). In the end the NAD decided to try a different approach, renovating
its galleries to attract more artists and a larger audience. In 1850 Cummings recorded his
shocked reaction, exclaiming: “New galleries and lighting! Yet with all such advantages,
the 25"I Annual Exhibition received only $3066.61; 373 works of art —- far less in amount
than had been obtained under much less favorable circumstances.” But he also
commented: “The falling off was undoubtedly attributable to the Art Union Free
Exhibition. It was scarcely to be expected that one Exhibition should be attended at
twenty-five cents admission, if an equally good one was obtainable at the same time and
equally convenient, for nothing.”59 Clearly, the NAD and the AAU were in direct
competition for American artists and public. While new galleries were impressive,
Cummings believed, probably quite justly, that more people attended the AAU exhibit
quite simply because it was free. The NAD and the AAU continued their unconcealed

and sometimes hostile competition until 1853 when the courts declared the AAU lottery

 

’8 Historic Annals of the National Academy of Design 215.

28

system illegal. However, in the meantime the AAU unquestionably damaged the NAD’s
reputation as the national art institution, succeeding in becoming a more popular
representative of national art and artists.

The American Art-Union was organized in New York in 1839. The Plan of the
AAU stated the goal of their organization, “ [to] accomplish A TRULY NATIONAL
OBJECT, uniting great public good with private gratification at small individual expense,
in a manner best suited to the situation and institutions of our country, and the wants,
habits and tastes of our people?”0 The constitution of the AAU, Article X, states the
organization’s financial goals: “The nett [sic] funds of the Institution shall be applied
first, to the purchase or production of fine Engravings, or other Works of American Art,
annually, which shall be distributed equally to all the members for each year respectively.
Second, to the purchase or production of Works of American Art (principally paintings)
to be distributed publicly at the annual meeting among all the members for the year, by
lot, each member having one share for every five dollars paid by him. By Works of
American Art are meant the Works of Artists resident in the United States, or American
Artists abroad.”61 The AAU’s openly nationalistic self-promotion and attention to the
desires of the people was meant to set it apart fi'om other New York art organizations and
point specifically to the difl‘erences between itselfand the NAD.

However, while the lottery system helped to create a broad-based market for the
sale of fine art, the AAU’s primary audience was still located in the northeastern states.

Its location in New York City couldn’t help but contribute to which artists were recruited

 

’9 Historic Annals of the National Academy of Design 219.

6° American Art Union, Plan of the American Art-Union (New York: American Art Union: 1839) l.

6‘ American Art Union, Constitution of The American Art-Union (New York: Amaican Art Union, 1839)
3.

29

for their exhibit. Most of thenr, including well-known artists such as Durand, Church,
and Cole lived in eastern states. People who attended the exhibitions would have heard
of these artists, and obtaining their paintings was simply easier, more practical and
attracted more visitors. Also, for many Americans the concept of “native” or “American”
still referred primarily to a very small area, New England, and with the exception of a
few artists who depicted images of the west, many artists also identified themselves and
their work with the east. So, although the AAU claimed otherwise, the artists it
supported and the patrons it appealed to were quite similar if not identical to those of the
NAD, a fact reflected by the two organizations’ rivalry.

Despite their claims of being the first true promoters of American art, the AAU
members’ aim was firndamentally commercial and it is primarily for the organization’s
commercial achievements that it is known today. Art Historian, Patricia Hill, addressing
the AAU’s financial success, notes that “the artists supported by the Union enjoyed a
patronage that hardly existed before. And the Union wholeheartedly encouraged
specifically American scenes, making it in American artists’ best interest to exhibit at the
American Art-Union.“2 Through its policy of purchasing or commissioning works
directly from the artists, the AAU eliminated the uncertainty in attempting to sell works
independently at Academy annuals and also appealed more to the artists not involved
with any of the art schools. Artists could be sure that their work would not only gain
exposure but also sell, and they would be promoted as a representative of American art.
In addition, the AAU was believed to be more “national” than the “National” Academy

of Design. The membership of the Art-Union was dispersed among a number of states,

 

”2 Patricia Hills, The Painters 'America: Urban and Rural Life, 1810-1910 (New York: Praeger, 1974)
23.

30

whereas the activities of the artist’s academy, as the NAD was called, were confined to
the New York City area.63
While art exhibitions and organizations were already popular, the success of the

AAU took the public, the artists and the other art institutions by surprise. It succeeded in
making art a part of daily life, drastically increasing the level of awareness and interest in
American art. Because of its journal the Bulletin, the AAU reached a much wider
audience than the NAD had. The Bulletin included a variety of information, such as
articles about aesthetics and the connection between art and nationalism, descriptions of
works shown at the exhibition, illustrations of the exhibit space itself, and reviews of
exhibitions sponsored by other art institutions. The AAU attempted to offer something
for everyone, whether they lived in New York or elsewhere. People outside of New York
could at least read about the works shown at the AAU exhibition, even if they couldn’t
attend the exhibit. The Union’s membership numbers reflected the rapid spread of its
popularity, with only a single dip during the first decade the membership rose from 814
in 1839 to 18,960 in 1849. Furthermore, there were some 250 members enrolled from
New England in 1842, by 1849 there were over 3000.64 The increase in the sheer number
of people seeing and reading about the AAU and the artists who exhibited there nmkes it
easy to tmderstand why Durrie and other American artists turned to it for support.

The members of the AAU saw themselves as liaisons between the people
attending their exhibits and the artists exhibiting there and used the Bulletin to give

advice to both groups. In the Bulletin they advised American artists that “subjects

 

‘3 Fink and Taylor, Academy 46. The Art-Union sent agarts out into most of the states in the Northeast to
find American artists who painted what the Union deemed to be national scenes and recruit them to exhibit
at its exhibitim.

31

illustrating national character, or history, or scenery,” the “literature or manners of the
country,” the “native, son], its sentiments and own peculiar views” were best because
they appealed “most strongly to the national feeling, although “national feeling” was
never defined?“ Many artists took this advice to heart, and produced paintings that
featured scenes fi'om American daily life or American scenery. The belief that beauty
could be found in the commonplace led a number of artists, including Durrie, to represent
their concept of native life through depictions of ordinary scenes and local landscapes.‘56
The exhibition records of the AAU suggest that, on average, landscapes outnumbered
other subjects by about four to one.67 Perhaps Durrie felt an art institution that promoted
American scenery and encouraged an art market to be a more appropriate place for him to
exhibit his landscape paintings than the NAD had been. Instead of sending a mix of
genres as he had when exhibiting at the NAD, he sent landscapes to the AAU uniquely.
The first paintings Durrie submitted in 1848 were a view of East Rock, location
unknown, which probably looked quite similar to his View of East Rock fi'om 1853
discussed earlier (Figure 5), and a work he referred to simply as Winter Scene. 68 The
following year he listed sending A View of New Haven and East Rock in his account book

and in 1850 two paintings of East Rock and a small painting of West Rock, receiving a

 

6’ Carl Bode, Anatomy of American Popular Culture 1840-1861 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1960.) 63.

6’ Lillian B. Miller, Patrons and Patriotism: The Encouragement of the Fine Arts in the United States

1 790-1860 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966) 168.

6" Russell Nye, Society and Culture in America, 1830-1860 (New York: Harper & Row, 1974) 160.

‘7 Bode, Anatomy of American Popular Culture 67. Bode’s book provides excellent background
information concerning the AAU and the Cosmopolitan Art Association, the two most successful Ameican
art unions in the l9Ii century. The CAA will be discussed late in this text.

6‘ Durrie, Account Book December 1848 This is the first time Durrie mentions the AAU in his account
book. However, thee is a mystery to this notation. Durrie simply writes “East Rock, Winter Scene: Art
Union”. But Durrie’s paintings were not listed in the Art-Union Bulletin for that year. In his diary these
two works do not include the prices they sold for, suggesting that they didn’t sell or were not accepted by
the Art-Union that year. In the subsequent ertries concerning works sent to the Art-Union Durrie included

32

total of $290 for the five paintings. The following year he sent ten paintings to the AAU,
receiving at total of $535. According to Durrie’s account book he was now making forty
dollars on the average for a landscape, three times as much as what he was making for
one in 1843. Dmrie lists the paintings sent to the AAU in 1851 as follows: Washington
(he earned the most money for this work, $100), Velvet Hat, Sleighing Party, West Rock,
Settling a Bill, Winter Sports, Youthful Recollections, The Old Mill, 2 Winter Scenes,
Sketch of N. Haven... ”West Rock ”. Of these paintings, Settling a Bill (Figure 12), sold
for $60, is the only one that can be positively identified as the painting sent to the AAU.
There is a resemblance between Settling a Bill, a genre scene, and William Sidney
Mount’s paintings The Dance of the Haymakers (Figure 13) from 1845 and The Power of
Music from 1847, (Figure 14). Although Durrie did not paint many genre scenes he was
interested in geme painting, and it seems clear that Mount had a substantial influence on
his genre painting style. An in—depth analysis of this connection between the two artists
would be extremely interesting but lies outside of the scope of this essay.69

Durrie exhibited at the AAU exhibition of 1852, which was its last year in
existence. He notes sending paintings in his account book but it is unclear how many or
which he sent. The majority of the paintings he lists for that year were landscapes and it
is reasonable to believe that most, if not all, of the works he sent to the exhibit were
landscapes as well. The AAU had experienced a sudden drop in enrollment in 1851.

According to its records, the subscriptions for December 1851 were five thousand less

 

prices for the paintings, suggesting they were indeed sold through the Art-Union lottey system or
pgurdrased by an individual patron.
Durie, Account Book December 1851.

33

than December 1850.70 In 1852 the New York State Supreme Court declared the AAU’s
lottery system illegal and morally wrong. As the lottery was the primary reason for its
success, the AAU was unable to survive this ruling and shut down.

As for Durrie, with the help of the AAU he lmd made the transformation from
local scene painter to representative of “national” scenery within New England. His
paintings were beginning to sell for substantial sums in New York. The New Haven
Daily Journal and Courier announced on November 15, 1853 that Durrie’s A New
England Sleighing Scene, now lost, had sold for $195 in New York City.“ Between
1852 and 1857 Durrie did not exhibit in New York, again focusing on creating works for
his New Haven audience. During this time he had the lithographs of his East and West
Rock paintings made. As he was no longer keeping a diary and his exhibition records, if
he continued to keep them, cannot be found, it is unclear how much he painted and
exhibited during this period and why he decided not to exhibit in New York. However,
paintings surviving fi'om this period show that he painted many winter landscape scenes,
including at least one other version of Jones Inn (Figure 15). This scene, dated 1855,
difi’ers slightly fi'om the earlier version. The entire setting is closer to the picture plane
and includes more animals and figures. However, the basic compositional elements
remain the same. Perhaps, as he had with his versions of East Rock and West Rock,
Durrie found means to sell variations of this scene to multiple patrons.

After a twelve-year absence, Durrie’s name appeared again in the NAD exhibition

records for 1857, which listed Winter In the Country and Country School House (Winter),

 

7° Bode, Anatomy of American Popular Culture 78. I am unable to find a satisfactory reason for such a
drastic drop in numbers when the organization had previously been so successful.

7‘ New Haven Journal & Courier. This information appeared on the “Announcements” page of the paper.
Durrie probably submitted this information to the newspaper, pehaps to encourage local sales.

34

both for sale.72 And the following year he again submitted two winter scenes, Old School
House- Winter and Farmer ’s Home- Winter. By 1858 the NAD was beginning to rally
from its earlier financial problems and was making a rapid recovery. That year it rented
new galleries on Broadway and had five hundred-sixty works on display. The exhibition
brought in over four thousand dollars.73 Durrie again had remained attentive to the
inclinations of potential patrons and other artists and was exhibiting with the most
popular art organization in New York City.

By 1859 Durrie had gained a reputation specifically as a winter scene painter. He
submitted only one landscape, Winter Landscape-Getting Wood (Figure 16) at that years’
NAD exhibition.74 This painting deviates from the scenes featuring farmyards,
schoolhouses and inns that Durrie had submitted in previous years. Here Durrie
abandoned depicting a particular place in order to address more profound themes. The
title of the painting, Gathering Wood suggests an interest in a human element. The lone
tree in this painting is larger and more gnarled than the tree in both versions of Jones Inn
discussed earlier, dominating the left side of the scene. In fact, all of trees seem to have
thicker, more abundant branches, tiny twigs sprouting from every possible limb and

twisting into the sky, seeming surround and enclose the two figures, who appear to be

 

72 National Academy of Design Exhibition Record 1826.1 860, Volume 1, ed. Cowdrey. (New York: JJ.
Little & Ives, Co. 1943). It is difficult to provide illustrations for many of the paintings Durrie exhibited
because he used the same titles, or very close variations, for many of his paintings and besides his early
exhibition record book there are no written records that of his transactions.

73 Historic Annals of the National Academy of Design 269-270. Cummings kept very exact records
concerning all the details of the exhibition. That year the exhibit was open sixty-eight days and brought in
$4,297.25. Assuming that most of those funds came fiorn the 25 cents admission fee, some seventeen
thousand people saw the exhibit. The following year, 1859, the exhibit earned even more, bringing in
nearly six thousand dollars in sixty-five days.

7’ This image, fi‘om the Boston Museum of Fine Art Collection, is not believed to be the version of the
scene that was exhibited at the National Academy. However, it was painted at approximately the same
time, in 1859, and is certainly very Similar. The difficulty with positively identifying which paintings
Durrie exhibited lies in the fact that he often made multiple versions of scenes and they frequently appear
to be nearly identical.

35

alone. They walk on a path that leads from the right side of picture space into the
midground, disappearing behind some trees. But a large fallen tree lying across the
immediate foregrormd blocks our path into the scene, its branches broken or cut ofl‘ by
others or by these figures during an earlier foray. The man and woman, their backs to the
viewer, carry long branches in their arms and are followed by a little dog. They appear
minute in relation to the arching, towering trees around them. Clearly, nature still
dominates here but the figures’ activity also draws our attention to their role in the scene,
symbolically, if not physically, challenging the wild smroundings. Yet another version
of the scene from the same year, entitled simply Gathering Wood (Figure 17), appears
nearly identical but for the addition of a house and figures on a frozen pond in the distant
midground creating a very different feeling. And while the composition of the trees and
figures are nearly duplicates of the other version, there seem to be more stumps and fallen
trees in the second scene.75 The lone tree to the left of picture space seems much less
sizable, having lost many of its branches. Civilization has begun to encroach upon nature
and nature in turn seems to have shrunk. Over time Durrie painted four other variations
on this theme of cutting and gathering wood. These like images address the issue that
while regions were still men as describing people, humans were increasingly changing
the face of the land to reflect themselves; a phenomenon that was taking place all over the
country.

As the decade ended Durrie’s career finally began to develop outside of New
England. The art market was improving and another art organization, the Cosmopolitan

Art Association, was experiencing increasing popularity. In 1860, in addition to

 

7’ 0n the subject of the symbolism of tree stumps in nineteenth century American art see Nicolai Cikovsky,
Jr., “The Ravages of the Axe”: The Meaning of the Tree-Stump in Nineteerth-Celtury American Art,” The

36

exhibiting three paintings at the NAD Exhibition, Durrie exhibited twelve paintings at the
newest art organization.76 The CAA was established in June of 1854. Although its
headquarters were in Sandusky, Ohio, it had an office in New York City as well.77
During its first two years membership grew slowly, but by 1857 had increased to thirty-
three thousand. The founders of the CAA, very aware of the ruling by the New York
courts that had led to the closure of the AAU, decided it would be safer to conduct their
business fiom Ohio. For artists one of the prime assets of the CAA was its widespread
membership throughout the nation, far greater than any other art union experienced. It
was therefore guaranteed a wider audience than other organizations had even during the
heyday of the AAU. 78

The Association’s motto “For the Encouragement and General Diffusion of
Literature and the Fine Arts” emphasized its equal focus on literature and art and it
claimed that other Art Unions failed because they did not realize tlnlt the American
people valued literature even more highly than art. For a yearly membership of three
dollars the CAA offered its members not only a share in their art lottery but also a one-
year subscription to any of the current three-dollar magazines. These were some of the
most popular magazines of the day including Harper ’s, Putnam ’s, and Knickerbocker.

The CAA agreed with publishers of the magazines to give 3/5 of the money collected for

 

Art Bulletin 61 (1979): 61 1-26.

76 The paintings exhibited at the National Academy were Farmyard in Winter, Winter Sunset, and Fruit,
one of four known still-lifes painted by Durrie, its location unknown. Because still-lifes weren’t subjects
he often painted there have been problems attributing the few that exist to him. His brother, John Durrie Jr.
(1818-1898) and his son, George Boiw Durrie (1842-1907) were also artists and in addition to finishing
many of his unfinished works after his death, they often used Durrie’s compositions as inspiration for their
own. For more information about these two artists and the problem of attributing Durrie’s still-lifes and
other works, see Martha Hutson, George Henry Durrie 152-165.

77 Despite their initial desire to remain outside of New York, the Association late relocated to New York
City and in June of 1857 the Association bought the Dusseldorf Galley and its collection. For more
information on this purchase see The Cosmopolitan Art Journal Supplement, 2, no. 1 December 1857: 53.

37

subscriptions and us 2/5 to buy art and meet administrative overhead. AS good as this
idea seemed initially, the Association soon realized that it posed difficulties.
Subscriptions were lost in the mail and the publishers came to demand a larger
percentage of the money collected. By 1856 the CAA was following the format of the
AAU much more closely, replacing the magazine subscriptions with its own journal and
distributing an annual engraving. 79 The CAA, like the AAU, also consistently preached
a business ethic to artists and praised without exception the taste of America’s buying
public. It insisted that all artists “of real merit could make a living quite equal to the
liberal living of a prudent person.” and believed that as patronage had become much
more widespread and general public interest in American art had also grown, any
American artist who depicted national subject matter and exhibited his works would have
no difficulty finding patrons.80

The CAA followed the example of the AAU most particularly in the rafiles it held
and in its candid support of American art and artists. However, while the AAU made
advances in calling attention to national art it was unspecific about what it felt national
art should be, simply referring to the “wants, habits and tastes of our people.” The CAA,
for its part, was very specific about what it felt American art should strive for. A passage
item the June 1857 issue of the Cosmopolitan Art Journal pronounced: “As language
keeps alive the fire of nationality, so should painting embalm the genius of a country by
preserving memory of familiar scenes, or by transmitting to posterity reminiscences of

actions, deeds, or manners. Our artists seem to have committed a grievous error in

 

7‘ Bode, Anatomy of American Popular Culture 81. This would eventually prove to be a disadvantage as
the southern states began to secede. The Association lost many of its members just prior to the Civil War.

38

overlooking the intrinsic importance of nationath in the selection of subjects, and have
thus discarded the very quality, which may have cloaked minor imperfections.”81 In
order to support statements such as this the CAA made efforts to find young and
upcoming artists whose work they felt embodied the type of national art they wanted to
promote. The Association recruited Durrie as an American winter landscape painter and
promoted him as such. It particularly approved of Durrie’s winter scenes because of their
wide appeal to a broad audience in the northern United States. The Cosmopolitan Art
Association Journal stated “G.H. Durrie of New Haven, has wrought at his easel with
real success during the past year. His winter scenes especially are admirable, and should
serve to give the artist a book-fill] of orders.”82 Durrie had finally found enthusiastic
support for his winter landscapes.

The Cosmopolitan Art Association Illustrated Catalogue for 1860 included the
following works by Durrie: The January Night, Mid- Winter, Winter in New-England, The
Frozen Stream, The Delaware, New Hampshire Scenery, Stuay of Rocks, The Winter
Resort, Winter in the Forest, Boyhood ’s Sports, Our Boyhood ’s Home, and Glimpse at
Lake George. Each title was accompanied by a Short description. Mid- Winter, location
unknown, for instance, was described as “Trees covered with snow. Men and women
gathering fagots. Snow-clad mountains in the background. A very effective picture in its
coloring and drawing. It impresses one with a sense of winter, just to look upon it.” This

description reminds one of Winter Landscape - Gathering Wood (Figure 16) and its

 

7’ Bode, Anatomy ofAmerican Popular Culture 81-82. This decision reflects the firct that, despite its
closure by the law four years earlie, the American Art-Union remained the model for new art
organizations.

'° Harris, The Artist in American Society 244.

3' CosrrrOpoIitan Art Journal 1, no. 4, June 1857: 1 17.

39

variations, and it is likely that it was another version of the scene. Another painting,
Winter in New-England, was described as “one of the best winter pieces by this excellent
artist. It embraces as its subject a farmhouse, barn, etc., with a farmer returning home
with a sled-load of wood. The management of lights and shadows is particularly
admirable?” This painting is quite possibly Winter Scene in New England (Figure 18),
in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery. Despite the Slightly different titles
the image matches the catalogue description. The Yale painting, like the image described
in the CAA catalogue, measures eighteen by twenty-four inches. A man in the
foreground walks behind a team of oxen hauling a sled full of wood. The path he follows
bends sharply behind a stone wall in front of a farmhouse and barn in the mid-ground,
which bustles with activity as a woman brings in wood and another figure works in the
barn. Totheright ofthepathanenormoustree frarnestheright side ofpicture space.
The management of light and shadows in this painting is very odd. The sun appears to be
shining brightly outside of the left of picture space and illuminating the left side of dark
clouds that move in fiom the left. The man walking along the path casts a distinct
shadow on the snow. Although the sky in the right side of the scene appears cloudless
and the left half cloudy, the left half of the scene is distinctly brighter. While Durrie
often placed the clouds in the left side of the picture space, his earlier paintings did not
include direct sunlight, or impression of a bright light source. This landscape represents
the type of painting Durrie sent to the Cosmopolitan Art Association at the end of the

decade, regional winter scenes widely sold as representatives of national art.

 

'2 Cosmopolitan Art Journal 3, no. 5 December 1859. The Cosmopolitan Art Association printed two
publications: the Illustrated Catalogue, to present the works they were showing at their exhibition, and the
Journal, which seved a similar purpose to the Art-Union’s Journal.

40

Durrie showed twelve more winter scenes in the Cosmopolitan Art Association
drawing in 1861.84 Unfortunately, this was the Association’s final year in business as the
CAA lost much of its membership with the onset of the Civil War. Durrie’s career had
outlived two major art organizations. An increasing interest in nationalism and its
interpretations within different regions had coincided with the development of his career
so that Durrie’s paintings, although representative of New England, with institutional
promotion came to embody a more general type of American landscape, and took on an
increased national and cultural significance. Many of the landscapes Durrie completed in
the last few years of his life, to be discussed in the final section of this paper, were
adapted and used widely as prints and illustrations throughout the mid and late nineteenth
century. Through these media his images continued to cater to a nationwide nostalgia for

a simpler America that in the early 18605, with the outbreak of the Civil War, became

even more appealing.

 

'3 Cosmopolitan Art Association Illustrated Catalogue December 1860 (New York: Cosmopolitan Art
Association) 185. The descriptions of the paintings in the catalogue were usually outlined in shorthand
with the lot number, title, measurement, and the artist’s last name.

at Cosmopolitan Art Association Illustrated Catalogue December 1861. The paintings were: A
Connecticut Winter Scene, Winter Scene in New Hampshire, Winter, Winter in the Country (oval), Winter
Landscape, New England Winter, A Winter Sketch, Farm Life in Winter, Farm-Yard In Winter, Getting Ice,
Winter Sunset, and Winter Scene-Getting Wood None of these paintings can be positively identified as
extant.

41

SENTIMENTALITY A1311) POPULAR IMAGERY
NOSTALGIA IN NINETEENTH CENTURY VISUAL CULTURE

In the final years of Durrie’s life (1860-63) the United States witnessed the affects
of the Civil War on nationalism. More than ever before, the concept of patriotism was
broken down into regions, and within the northern part of the country the northeast
became a model for what national character should entail. Historian Lillian B. Miller
points out that cultural nationalism emanated from those regions where national unity
was regarded as a desirable and beneficial condition, and, of course, native and
contemporary art received its greatest stimulation in these regions.”85 A sense of history,
tradition, and constancy made New England the natural example for the other regions of
the North to follow and some of the most popular art recalled New England’s past,
sentirnentally depicting better times rather than the upheaval that currently divided the
country.86 Durrie’s images, although contemporary, provided patrons in the north the
opportunity to proudly own a reflection of what they believed to be, and indeed what was
sold to them as their own roots, initially by the art organizations and now increasingly
through popular prints. His paintings, among others, were sold as visual proof of New
England’s enduring values, which now were overshadowed by industrialization and the
violent conflict taking place in the nation. This theme, also echoed in prints and

illustrations, contained some measure of sentimentality because it appealed to the

public’s emotional desire to perceive a traditional identity in a romantic light.

 

8’ Miller, Patrons and Patriotism 229.

36 An upcoming exhibition at the National Museum of American Art, Image and Memory: Pictw'ing Old
New England [865-1945 (opening April 2 and running to August 22, 1999), and the accompanying
exhibition catalogue examine depictions of New England during and after this peiod. Roger B. Stein and
William H. Truettne edit the catalogue, which has not yet been published

42

As Durrie’s career developed his paintings were marketed less as landscapes and
more as depictions of peoples’ lives from the region he represented. His images were
sought after by patrons not only as paintings but also increasingly as prints, appealing as
the genre scenes Currier & Ives emphasized them to be as well as landscapes. Currier &
Ives’ adaptations of Durrie’s scenes accentuated the figures via vivid colors and shading,
sometimes even adding additional people and animals.87 Durrie seems to have been
agreeable to this marketing development, perhaps because of his interest in genre
painting, something for which he did not possess great skill. Although he painted genre
scenes occasionally throughout his life, as exemplified by Settling a Bill (Figure 12), his
awkward handling of figures impeded his interest in pursuing the genre more seriously.
Even so, at this point Durrie’s paintings were more about the activities of the small,
indistinct figures in the scenes than landscapes. And the titles of many paintings
completed during the last three years of Durrie’s life seem to suggest an interest in the
human aspect of the scenes rather than in their landscape backgrounds. This unique
balance between the human (suggested by the presence of the figures), and yet generic
(depicted indistinctly in a scene that could be any number of places) was what appealed
to Currier & Ives as it searched for images that would appeal to a wide range of
patrons.88

Winter in the Country: A Cold Morning (Figure 19) painted in 1861, provides an
excellent example of the type of image Currier & Ives adapted and sold as popular prints.

The title itself draws the senses into the scene. One wonders how cold it could possibly

 

'7 Perhaps the best example of this is Currier & Ives’ Home to Thanksgiving, 1867, based on Durrie’s
Farmyard Winter from 1862. The compositions are identical but in addition to adapting a more genre-like
title five figures and a number of animals were added.

43

be as the figures depicted go about completing morning chores despite the suggestion of
an oncoming storm in the dark clouds to the lefi of picture space, subtly attesting to the
hardiness of New Englanders. The contrast of the hazy mountains in the distance keeps
the viewer’s gaze to the sharply outlined and colored inn yard. A man with his back to
us, followed by a little dog, walks up the path, serving as viewer surrogate, his movement
also encouraging us to “move” into picture space with our eyes. He appears to walk in
the tracks made by two horse-drawn sleighs already parked by the inn. There, two men
greet each other and a woman draws water fi'om the well in the yard. Two large trees
We the right side of the composition, marking the point of entry into the inn yard and
framing the inn itself. The tree to the left also provides a visual barrier, and perhaps the
suggestion of a social barrier, between the left side of picture space, where farmhands
work in open outbuildings tending to the animals, and the rights side of picture space
where guests and the owners of the inn socialize. The figures’ features are indistinct;
they could represent anyone in any of the depicted roles, perhaps even the purchaser of
the image. Just as much as this scene depicts the winter season, it also depicts the
activities of the figures represented. The dependability of a morning routine and a
resolution in completing habitual tasks were aspects of a way of life that patrons of the
image, seeking a solid and reliable sense of identity in rapidly changing times, wanted to
see in their lives and themselves.

Currier & Ives published their lithograph, drawn by Fanny Palmer, Winter in the
Country: A Cold Morning, (Figure 20) based on the painting twice, in 1863 and 1864,

and it was one of the largest prints they made afier his work, measuring 20.3x27.1

 

'3 Walton Rawls, The Great Book of Currier & Ives ’ America (New York: Abbeville Press, I979) 13.

44

inches.89 Although this lithograph was one of the most popular the firm made after one
of Durrie’s paintings, his relationship with Currier & Ives had actually begun two years
prior in 1861 and was already firmly established by 1862 before this print was published.
In December of that year Durrie held a major auction of seventy-one paintings
conducted by Miner & Somerville at the Snedicor Gallery in New York City.90 The size
of the solo auction was new to Durrie and his expectations for it were high. The
advertisements proclaimed: “A catalogue of a fine collection of oil paintings representing
New England Winter Scenery, by our Favorite American Artist, G.H. Durrie Esq. of New
Haven.”91 Durrie optimistically estimated the worth ofthe paintings at $3,830.
However, in the end the auction raised only half that amount and Durrie was disappointed
with the results.92 However, Cunier & Ives attended the auction, and is believed to have
purchased six of the ten Durrie paintings that it would eventually adapt into prints there.
By this time the publishing company had built an extremely successful business
based upon the quality and variety of their prints, especially their artistic scenes. In fact,
after 1852 and before 1880, Currier & Ives almost completely forsook job printing in
order to create and market a stock of inexpensive decorative pictures.93 Virgil Barker
comments on the widespread acceptance of prints: "Practically every painter whose
originals were much sought after by collectors owed most of his general fame to the
popularity of reproductions.”94 Prints played an important role in developing and

bolstering the art market, and in order to achieve the highest quality prints Currier & Ives

 

“9 Currier & Ives: A Catalogue Raisonné (Detroit: Gale Research, 1984) 753.

9° It is unknown whether Durrie held this auction for financial reasons or whether he simply was benefiting
from his new found popularity with the Cosmopolitan Art Association.

9' Hutson, George Henry Durrie 203.

92 Hutson, George Henry Durrie 104. The auction took place on December 22, 1862.

93 Currier & Ives: A Catalogue Raisonné xxiii.

9‘ Barker, American Painting: History and Interpretation 507.

45

commissioned a number of artists to paint original paintings prints could be based upon.95
Currier & Ives became interested in Durrie’s paintings perhaps as a result of his recent
success with the Cosmopolitan Art Association. It purchased and printed two scenes in
1861, New England Winter Scene and The Farmyard in Winter (Figures 21 & 22). Early
prints made after Durrie’s paintings sold well, and between 1861 and 1867 Currier & Ives
printed at least one large print afier Durrie’s paintings per year, most including his
signature on the print, a token of esteem offered only to the most respected artists.96

Currier & Ives shared their audience, the urban upper-middle class of New York
City and the inhabitants of the surrounding area, with the AAU and CAA. However,
unlike these two art organizations, which primarily distributed prints and paintings to
their members within that region, Currier & Ives’ prints were obtainable by most people
nationwide, attracting middle and lower class patrons from both urban and rural
communities, as well as wealthier consumers.” Patrons were drawn in particular to
prints alter Durrie’s paintings for the same reason they were drawn to the paintings
themselves. Currier & Ives, like the art organizations, sold Durrie’s images of farms and
inns as depictions of peaceful havens, cozy shelters against the cold. The stability and
harmony of rural life depicted in the scenes, promoted in direct contrast to images
representing the ongoing national instability, also recorded by Currier & Ives in their
prints of Civil War battles, made them sentimental favorites with the public and

continued to do so in the years following Durrie’s death.

 

9’ Currier & Ives, The Esmark Collection of Currier & Ives (Chicago: Esrnark, 1975) 3. It isn’t known
whether Currier & Ives purchased all of Durrie’s paintings from him after he had painted them or whether
it actually commissioned him to paint some of the scenes for the purpose of reproducing as prints. It is
believed that Fanny Palmer, an employee of Currier & Ives for thirty years, was the artist who adapted
most of Dun'ie’s paintings into prints. Her variations remain surprisingly faithful to the original images.
9‘ Cmier & Ives: A Catalogue Raisonné xxiv. The sizes ofthese prints varied; 16”x21” was the smallest
and 20”x27” was the biggest.

At mid-century this longing for what was perceived as the lost simplicity and
dependability of rural daily life as represented in visual imagery had its parallels in
literary writings in New England as well. Poems addressing winter created a haven out
of the potentially threatening season. A farm in winter, in a painting as in literature
constituted its own little world, where needs, desires, and conflicts were confined to the
simplicity of interaction between humans and nature. Snowbound: A Winter Idyll by
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) cast winter in a reminiscent light, calling upon
boyhood memories of life on the family farm, recalling the events tint took place during
and after a harsh winter storm, invoking a feeling of cheerfulness and pleasure in the
daily aspects of life with fiiends and family.

Whittier, a New England native like Durrie, wrote Snowbound in 1865; the book,
which first appeared on February 17, 1866, was an immediate success. A letter fi'om the
publisher, J.T. Fields, written to Whittier three months after publication attests to the
popularity this notion of the past and its nostalgic simplicity had with a wide variety of
people. “We can’t keep the plaguey thing quiet,” Fields wrote. “It goes and goes, and
now, today, we are bankrupt again, not a one being in crib.”98 For those raised in the
country who 1nd since moved to urban areas the poem held the sentimental appeal of a
former lifestyle, and to those who still lived in the country it offered a comforting
reminder of the more pleasant aspects of what was often a difficult life. While Durrie’s
paintings and prints created a rapport with patrons, providing a positive sense of identity,
Whittier’s poem, remembering his home and family, gave readers the tangible comfort

and individual personalities only suggested by figures in Durrie’s images. The allusion

 

97 Currier & Ives: A Catalogue Raisonné xxiv.
9' Robert Penn Warrai, John Greenleaf Whittier ’s Poetry 47.

47

and promise of hearth and home represented in Durrie’s paintings by loads of firewood
on oxen-drawn sleighs, smoke rising fi'om the chimneys, open doorways, and figures
working outside, is provided in Snowbound:

Between the andirons’ straddling feet,

The mug of cider simmered slow,

The apples sputtered in a row,

And, close at hand, the basket stood

With nuts from brown October’s wood. (170-175)99
Here firewood has become kindling, warming the rooms behind the doors, and the
contentment that waits inside has been revealed. Later in the poem Whittier proclaims
his family’s sense of tradition, proudly recounting his mother’s family stories and
proclaiming his childhood way of life as,

So rich and picturesque and fiee,

(The common unrhymed poetry

Of simple life and country ways,) (263-265)loo
Although individualized, the nostalgic nature of Whittier’s memories encouraged
memories of the readers’ own Childhood’s and family histories, generating a connection
to their own sense of identity as New England natives. Although the art organizations
used conventional imagery to inspire more specific emotions, it was this exact bond that
they had encouraged people to find in Durrie’s paintings and hoped patrons would draw
fi‘om his images.

Itis inthe lastpartofthe poem, asWhittierrecountsthe afiermathofthe storm,

that his words most coincide with Durrie’s imagery in two specific paintings, Winter

 

9" John Greenleaf Whittier, Snowbound: A Winter Idyll (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1866) 19.
'°° Whittier, Snowbound: A Winter Idyll 24.

48

Scene in New England (Figure 18) and Winter in the Country: A Cold Morning (Figure
23)‘°‘:

Next morn we wakened with the shout

Of merry voices high and clear;

And saw the teamsters drawing near

To break the drifted highways out.

Down the long hillside treading slow

We saw the imlf-buried oxen go,”

Shaking the snow from heads uptost,

Their straining nostrils white with frost.

Before our door the straggling train

Drew up, and added team to gain (630—638)‘°2
Although the teamsters in Durrie’s paintings lead oxen-drawn sleighs full of wood, the
portrayals of teamsters leading their sleds down a snowy lane towards a farm are quite
alike. The illustrations on the title page of the book and on the first page of text (Figure
24 & 25) further reinforce the similarities in imagery. On the title page, depicted fi'om a
distance we see a winter landscape in which a teamster leads an ox-drawn wagon up a
path towards a farmhouse. In the foreground a dog stands on a rise overlooking the scene
and a single tree rises up fiom the edge of the slope. The house itself and the
outbuildings, towards the left side of picture space, face the right, smoke rises fi'om the
chimney of the house and cattle graze in the barnyard. As in Durrie’s paintings, the focus
is on the farmyard; an easily recognizable locale that represented a center for social and
productive activities. The smaller image on the first page of text depicts a still snow-

covered farm, the roofs of the buildings laden with drifts. While the title page seems to

 

m Painted in 1862, this scene is practically identical to the first version fi'om 1861 except for slight
difi'erences in the rendering of the figures in the midground and the figure walking towards the inn replaced
by that of a man leading an oxen drawn sled laden with wood.

‘ Whittia', Snowbound: A Winter Idyll 45.

49

present us with the aftermath of the blizzard, the illustration for the first page of text sets
the stage for the poem with an appropriately wintry scene. '03

The success of the 1866 edition of Snowbound prompted the publishers to release
a special gilt edition for Christmas 1867. In a prefatory note, Whittier commended Harry
Fenn’s illustrations of his poems over time for their “faithfillness to the spirit and the
details of the passages and the places” in his ballads. '04 Penn’s illustrations of
Snowbound, closely recording Whittier’s memory of a simpler time, also resemble the
images the art organizations and Currier & Ives were working so hard to promote,
attesting to the power and pervasiveness of this ideal in all aspects of material culture.‘05
In the sentimental similarities between Whittier’s poem and Durrie’s images we see that
during an extremely chaotic time the pervasive power of nostalgic imagery, fueled by the
desires of the public, crossed media.

In the last year of Durrie’s life he exhibited at the NAD and at the Boston
Athenaeum. Currier & Ives published two more winter scenes after Durrie paintings. By
this time he had also attracted the interest of one major art collector, Robert L. Stuart, a
successful businessman whose collection included works by other well-known landscape
artists of the day. Stuart’s collection catalogue fi'om 1898 listed four painting by
Durrie.106 But despite his recent success and growing reputation (as proclaimed in his

New Haven Daily Register obituary on October 16, 1863: “Mr. Durrie had risen to the

 

'03 Sue Rainey, Creating Picturesque America (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1994) 293. The
illustrator of Whittier’s poem was Harry Fenn, a British artist who had come to the United States in 1856.
His “signature” is recognizable as the symbol the lower left foreground of picture space. Although thee is
no knowledge of Fenn working with Durrie, be trained as an engraver and a painter, and was certainly
aware of Currier & Ives’ widely published lithographs and also of the paintings being exhibited by his
contemporaries at the NAD and the other art organizations.

'0‘ Rainey, Creating Picturesque America 37—3 8.

'°’ Rawls, The Great Book of Currier & Ives ’Arnerica 14. Interestingly, Whittier and Nathaniel Currier
were friends and neighbors in Amesbury, Massachusetts.

50

fi'ont rank as a landscape painter, and acquired a national reputation...”), Durrie does not
seem to have achieved measurable financial success. '07 Mary Clarissa Durrie, writing to
the Yale University Art Gallery in 1930 concerning the return of a painting by her father,
donated earlier, stated: “My father, passing away at forty-three years of age, did not live
to amass sufficient, in the financial way, for support of his family.”108 It seems that he
continued to live his life as he had during the years he kept a diary, simply and modestly,
and although he never abandoned his career, he did not live long enough to realize a
substantial financial profit from it either. In 1879 when H. W. French published his Art
and Artists in Connecticut, he referred to Durrie as the “New England Farm Scene
Painter.” Durrie had achieved renown within his own region and continued to receive
nationwide attention primarily through Currier & Ives lithographs. His achievement as
an artist was the creation of lasting images, as Durrie referred to them, “Winter Scenes”,
that inspired and still inspire a feeling of sentimentality today. His images and the
variations produced, created ironically through industrial production techniques and sold
through urban marketing methods, promoted a way of life that at least fiom an idealized

nostalgic perspective was no longer easily obtainable and therefore all the more

appealing.

 

”6 Hutson, George Henry Durrie 190.
”7 Hutson, George Henry Durrie 148.
m Mary Clarissa Durrie, Letter to Yale University Museum, 31 May, 1930.

51

CONCLUSION

In the early part of the nineteenth century landscape painting grew to represent
American ideals, limitless, prosperous, and fi'uitfirl, thereby reflecting how the American
people perceived themselves and their possibilities. As the century progressed
landscapes acquired other symbolic meanings, memorializing a pre-industrial era when
the nation was still young and representing the changes that had taken place since.
During this time, because of the promotion by art associations and other media, images of
New England scenery became a part of daily culture and took on a new role as an icon in
the development of a national symbolic identity. Images of New England came to
represent and reinforce a sense of history and values. Durrie found a niche for his
paintings in a changing art market and his relatively short artistic career, spanning just
twenty-five years, was transformed into much more than the creation of simple images
depicting country winter days. Developing with the important American art institutions
that transformed his paintings into idealized reflections of American culture, his
conventional images became representations of a romantic identity that patrons willingly
accepted as their own, whether they actually ever lived it or not, in lieu of facing the
erosion of a whole way of life embodied by emergent urbanization.

Although his reputation has long faded and few connect Durrie’s images with
the artist today, his paintings and the ever-popular Currier & Ives prints based on them
still inspire a sense of nostalgia for a time and a way of life now completely out of our
reach. Especially around the winter holidays, Durrie’s images can still be seen in our

popular imagery on calendars, cookie tins, and holiday greeting cards (Figure 26). Even if

52

they do not resemble our own lives, Durrie’s images suggest the remembrance of a
common history that for many still evokes a sense of identity, despite a now complete
erosion of this way of life. As such, these images can be interpreted by us through the
same conventions people found appealing in the mid-nineteenth century, the allusions of
a conveniently identifiable sense of place in the apparent stability and independence of
rural daily life. The organized nostalgia created by popular culture over a century ago
was intended to appeal to a particular group of people in a specific time, providing them
with comfortingly generic and yet familiar images, reflecting potential national identities.
Nevertheless, this same nostalgia transcends the twentieth century and although no longer
communicated as openly, Durrie’s images, and others like them, still have relevance

today as people continue to experience a sentimental desire for a sense of place and self.

53

APPENDIX

54

 

1. George Henry Durrie, John Fisher Throckmorton Forman, 1841, o/c, 30x25”, Private
Collection.

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2. George Henry Durrie, Sketch of trees from Durrie ’s Sketchbook, 1838-1844, pencil
on paper, 6 ‘A x 9 V2”, New Haven Colony Historical Society.

56

 

3. George Henry Durrie, Ithiel Town’s Truss Bridge, 1847, o/c, 28% x 35'/2”, New
Haven Colony Historical Society.

57

 

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68

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77

SNOVV-BOUND.

A WINTER IDYL.

BY

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

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B'OSTON:
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1866.

 

24. JP Davis & Speer, SC, Illustration on Title Page of 1866 Edition of “Snowbound” by
John Greenleaf Whittier, 2% x 3”.

78

 

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80

BIBLIOGRAPHY

81

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I‘—

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85

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