George Henry Durrie’s Winter Scene in New Haven, Connecticut gives a calm and charming view of rural New England life in the mid nineteenth century. The lower part of the painting shows the house and farm on a snowy day. A child rides on a sleigh, cats and dogs play, and someone tends to a horse in the stable. The scene is playful but stable,with almost uniform tan and brown given to everything in the scene that is notn’t snow. In contrast, the sky in the background looks like it is about to storm, and it takes up over half of the painting. Durrie was born in New York City, which, along with the rest of America, was urbanizing rapidly when he made this painting in 1858. In this context, I believe that Winter Scene in New Haven, Connecticut
