Winter-time at Jones Inn is a quintessential example of the wintry barnyard scene for which George Henry Durrie is best known, illustrating the unique combination of landscape and genre elements that marks his signature approach. The artist created about 300 paintings during his short career, with his most celebrated work drawing inspiration from the idyllic winter landscape around his hometown of New Haven, Connecticut. Like many artists of the mid-nineteenth century, Durrie initially began his career as a portrait artist, but he most enjoyed exploring and painting nature. Primarily self-trained, he learned valuable lessons from observing the work of fellow artists of the Hudson River School. Durrie scholar Martha Hutson suggests his lack of formal training offered him the freedom to create his own idiosyncratic style.

Painted in the intimate 18 x 24-inch format that Durrie used most often, Winter-time at Jones Inn features a quaint cluster of rural buildings. He painted several Jones Inn pictures, each time improving on the composition, and Hutson notes, “Durrie was either very pleased with the composition of [the first] Jones Inn or else the painting proved most successful with the public, for at least three other version are known.” [1] The present work draws from his repertoire of favorite narrative elements, including a barn with an open door, a yellow inn with neighbors conversing on the porch, scattered barnyard animals with a dog at attention, and a sled carrying logs pulled by a horse and pair of oxen with a farmer walking alongside. The subject of homecoming and the nostalgic sentiment around simple farm life resonated with his audience, particularly in the post-Civil war era.

Durrie died from typhoid in 1863 at the young age of forty-three. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, his work regained popularity through the lithographic firm Currier & Ives, who purchased and copied ten paintings for sale as hand-colored prints, including the most famous, Home to Thanksgiving. In the 1930s, Traveler’s Insurance Company created an annual calendar for distribution that used works by Durrie to present nostalgic depictions of nineteenth-century American life, including Winter-time at Jones Inn, which appeared as the January 1957 image.

[1] Martha Y. Hutson, George Henry Durrie (1820-1863): American Winter Landscapist: Renowned Through Currier and Ives, Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1977, p. 90.