The Old Homestead in Winter

During the 1850s and early 1860s, George H. Durrie specialized in making landscapes and idyllic rural scenes. When the Currier & Ives printing firm selected ten of Durrie's paintings to be made into lithographs, Durrie's charming winter images became immensely popular with a vast public. In this snow-covered farm setting graced by grey clouds, a man and a horse stand in the doorway of a rustic barn; to the right of this structure (yet at a lower level), three cows and chickens occupy a barnyard near a snow-covered haystack. A sled (lower right), a wagon (left) and a sleigh (center) are parked haphazardly in the driveway approaching the three-story farmhouse set behind a wooden fence in the left background. Instead of depicting the hardships of country life, the artist idealized its wholesome features.

Nathaniel Currier, who established a successful New York-based lithography firm in 1835, produced thousands of hand-colored prints in various sizes that together create a vivid panorama of mid-to-late nineteenth century America. In 1857, James Merritt Ives (1824-1895), the accounting-savvy brother-in-law of Nathaniel's brother Charles, was made a business partner. People eagerly acquired Currier & Ives lithographs, such as those featuring spectacular American landscapes, or rural and city views, hunting and fishing scenes, domestic life and numerous other subjects, as an inexpensive way to decorate their homes or business establishments.