Winter in the Country: The Old Grist Mill

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 rural scene, a man drives a heavily loaded horse-drawn wooden sledge across a small wooden bridge over a stream that flows towards the viewer. Behind him is a grist mill with its large water wheel dipping into the stream; at the center of the image, another sledge (harnessed with oxen) is backed into the mill's open doorway so it can be loaded. A woman and child clamber over the snow to approach the mill's doorway. Leafless trees dot the landscape; several farm buildings are shown at the right. While hinting at the winter hardships of country life, the artist emphasized the scene's picturesque qualities, inspired by the Connecticut landscape, where he lived.

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; subsequently renamed Currier & Ives, the firm continued until 1907. 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.