George Henry Durrie 1820 - 1863

The Bruce Collection, Baltimore, Maryland (acquired directly from the artist)
By descent in the family to the present owner

Santa Barbara, California, Santa Barbara Museum of Art; San Diego, California, Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego; Fort Worth, Texas, Amon Carter Museum of Western Art; New Haven, Connecticut, New Haven Colony Historical Society, George Henry Durrie (1820-1863), American Winter Landscapist: Renowned Through Currier and Ives, December 1977-July 1978, no. 75, pp. 57, 62, 89, 186, 216, illustrated p. 62, fig. 59

Martha Hutson, George Henry Durrie (1820-1863), Santa Barbara, California, 1977, p. 60, illustrated p. 62, fig. 59

Please contact the department at 212-606-7280 to obtain a copy of the condition report prepared by Simon Parkes Art Conservation.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

We are grateful to Martha Hutson-Saxon, Ph.D. for preparing the following essay. Hutson-Saxon, a leading scholar on George Henry Durrie, is the author of George Henry Durrie: 1820-1863 (Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1977).

The paintings by George Henry Durrie are treasured examples of mid-nineteenth century American art. He is best known for the serene beauty of his winter landscapes and nostalgic recording of New England farm life before the Civil War. Durrie's artistic career was not a long one due to his death at forty-three, and only a few genre scenes are known today. Those that record life in and around his hometown of New Haven, Connecticut, are especially prized.  In the early 1850s, Durrie painted a series of genre pictures featuring men standing either inside or just outside of a barn with a view through the open doors into the interior. The figures are involved in business negotiations or enjoying a social afternoon. In 1852, a painting with the descriptive title of Barn Scene with Fiddler appeared for the first time in Durrie's Record Book.[1]  He used this subject matter again the following year with the painting now titled Holidays in the Country, The Cider Party and dated 1853. Around 1854, a painting with the title Paying the Fiddler was listed in a newspaper notice about a subscription raffle of art work by Durrie in New Haven.[2] This title could be applied to a composition with a fiddler receiving a glass of cider as recompense for his musical efforts. The painting in the subscription drawing may have been The Cider Party or possibly a fourth work by Durrie that continued the format with the fiddler, and would suggest that he was having success in selling these genre paintings in the New Haven area.

The present title Holidays in the Country, The Cider Party was very likely attached to the painting at an auction of Currier and Ives prints during the 1940s,[3] when these prints became popular with collectors again. Ten of Durrie's paintings were reproduced as Currier and Ives lithographs from 1861 to 1867, and other Currier & Ives prints followed them that included elements from Durrie's paintings but did not use his name. A pair of Currier & Ives prints published in 1868 reflect  Durrie's influence and have figures and animals in interior barn scenes under the overall title of Holidays in the Country and secondary titles of Troublesome Flies and The Old Barn Floor. The latter print included in the scene an African American man seated on a stool and playing a banjo. Durrie's paintings were not well known in the 1940s, and this painting's story of a fiddler inside a barn may have been viewed as close enough to the 1868 Currier and Ives prints to be given the same overall title of Holidays in the Country and a secondary title of The Cider Party.[4]

The Cider Party is the largest of Durrie's known genre pictures and reflects his admiration for the popular paintings of William Sidney Mount (1807-1868). Mount was the older artist and his career became associated with the theme of music by 1830. He had an early success with the painting Rustic Dance After a Sleigh Ride (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Karolik Collection), which included an African American fiddler. The popular reception in New York for Mount's painting was followed by commissions for the paintings, Dance of the Haymakers, 1845 (Suffolk Museum & Carriage House, Stony Brook, Long Island, New York) and The Power of Music, 1847 (The Century Association, New York). The theme of music that creates joy for everyone, young and old of all races, was admired by collectors and critics. Durrie likely knew the lithographs after both of these paintings, which were published by Goupil and Co. in 1848 and 1849. He could also have visited New York City to see one or both of the original paintings by Mount at the National Academy of Design exhibitions. Mount's paintings influenced several artists and show a direct influence on Durrie's composition for The Cider Party.

Similar to both artists is the view into the wooden barn with the open door. In Durrie's painting, the fiddler has just finished playing and is holding out his glass for a drink of cider being poured out for him. The atmosphere is a relaxed one of appreciation for these simple pleasures. The man leaning against the stall with his legs crossed relates to a similarly posed figure in The Power of Music. In Durrie's painting and Mount's Dance of the Haymakers, the fiddlers are placed at the right side of the barn opening and sit on woven baskets turned upside down. Mount was a respected violin player in his own right and in both of his paintings the musician is Caucasian, while outside the barn an African American child is playing sticks in time to the music on the door or an African American man leans against the door listening to the music. In Durrie's The Cider Party, the musician is African American, and Durrie has replaced the figures outside the barn with a horse tied up to the open door. The composition has an expansive and contented atmosphere combined with a busy scenario.

The narrative in Holidays in the Country, The Cider Party encompasses a past, present and future story. It is clear in Durrie's painting that the musical performance has just ended and that the present story is about the smiling response of the fiddler's audience and how much a drink of cider would be welcomed. At the same time, there is a humorous story going on with the animals. The saddled horse, hitched to the barn door, and the dog, lying on the barn floor, are looking at a large sow strolling into the foreground. The next event would be imagined, as the horse sidles away from the advancing pig and the dog stands up and starts barking. The men yell at the pig, who proceeds forward with equanimity, and the horse exits the scene at a gallop. This type of humor made the scenes more "real" to the viewers. They reflect life as unpredictable and country life in particular as filled with daily occurrences of rustic humor to the amusement of city dwellers.

There was also an underlying political message to these genre paintings by Mount and Durrie, which was noted by newspaper reviewers of Mount's paintings,[5] and would have been recognized by a regional audience in the 1840s and 1850s. Barn walls and doors were often used by farmers to record inventories and business transactions as well as drawings for ideas or for amusement. These drawings, dates and letters became a record of the changes that had occurred in the various political parties through the years. Durrie took note of what was written and drawn on the local barns and made use of this practice in his paintings.  A barn composition of 1851 by Durrie, entitled Settling a Bill, Selling Corn (Private Collection),[6] included a line drawing of a man and the date 1832 on the open door, which would have been recognized as a caricature of Andrew Jackson and the date of his election as President of the United States. Jackson's subsequent political actions were later viewed by many in the New Haven area as a betrayal of the "cider-associated" Whigs [Party].[7] The caricature drawing on the barn door in The Cider Party, 1853, was most likely meant to be Martin Van Buren, who had been Jackson's Vice-President and followed him in the Presidency. The initials, O K, above the drawing stood for the Democratic O.K. Club that supported Martin Van Buren in 1843 for a hoped-for second Presidential term.[8] The initials S.B. on the barn door and on the white sack inside the barn could be a political reference to two political factions of the Democratic Party, the Free Soilers and the Barnburners, who united in 1848 (tied up in one bag) to nominate Van Buren for the Presidency. The on-going political struggle over slave and non-slave states being accepted into the Union would eventually destroy the Whig Party. With the presence of both African American and Caucasian figures in these paintings shown in a relaxed, friendly environment and the pouring of the cider for the fiddler in The Cider Party, local sentiment and Durrie's feelings were plain in this debate. There are other such symbolic details in the picture, the most notable being the presence and response of the animals referencing political events of the time. The appearance of several genre paintings by Durrie with a similar setting and all dating from the early 1850s very likely reflects the strong objection felt by the artist and his patrons to the Compromise of 1850 legislation for statehood.

Genre scenes of this size by Durrie are rare in his known oeuvre, but he continued to paint them and titles suggesting genre themes appear in his last auction of 1862 in New York City,[9] just a year before his death. In the majority of his farmyard scenes and landscapes, the genre element can be just as appealing, and even humorous, but is reduced in size and only a part of the overall composition. The few barn scenes known today, like The Cider Party, are all from the early 1850s, which was the beginning of Durrie's mature style. They show a surprising amount of detail in the clothing and faces in comparison to the figures in his landscapes. In The Cider Party, his careful observation of the wooden walls and doors of the barn give them a special presence in the scene. There are charming details everywhere, as in the elegant violin held by the fiddler or the prosaic leather sole of a raised boot worn by one of his listeners inside the barn. Light and shade are used to orchestrate spatial recession from the foreground grasses to the details of the shadowed rear doors inside the barn. Particularly in The Cider Party, there is a careful study of pose and costume combined with a desire to demonstrate his ability in perspective and foreshortening, as with the rear view of the horse in the foreground. The poses of the figures are familiar ones for Durrie, and the elderly gentleman pouring the cider with such good will reappears in a later 1862 farmyard scene (New-York Historical Society), where he is welcoming a visitor on the front porch of his home. It is the feeling of human warmth in a Durrie painting that Americans treasure today with his delight in the common man and his rural New England heritage.

[1] Durrie's Record Book is located at the Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont. The pages cover the years 1839 to 1852. The pages are missing from 1853 to 1863.
[2] For the complete list of the subscription drawing, see M. Hutson, George Henry Durrie (1820-1863), American Winter Landscapist Renowned Through Currier and Ives, Los Angeles, American Art Review, 1977, 201. The winning ticket holder for Paying the Fiddler was J. B. Kirby.
[3] Catalog of Currier and Ives Prints and Durrie Painting, Plaza Art Galleries, New York, N.Y., Feb. 10, 1944, No. 50. The catalog lists the dimensions as 20 inches by 28 inches, which were probably sight dimensions.
[4] A painting titled Holidays in the Country, The Cider Party by George Durrie is cited as belonging to the Bruce Collection in M. Bartlett Cowdrey, George Henry Durrie 1820-1863, Connecticut Painter of American Life, Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, Conn., 1947, unnumbered p. 10; and Hermann W. Williams, Mirror to the American Past, A Survey of American Genre Painting: 1750-1900,  Greenwich, Conn., New York Graphic Society, 1973, 96. 
[5] Elizabeth Johns, American Genre Painting, The Politics of Everyday Life, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1991, 41-53.  
[6] In addition to Barn Scene with Fiddler, 1852, Durrie listed two other known genre paintings with the barn setting in his Record Book: Settling a Bill (later titled Selling Corn), 1851 (Private Collection) and Settling a Bill (listed by Durrie as a copy), 1852. The latter is most likely the painting now at the Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont, which was dated 1852 on a photograph in the Frick Reference Library, New York City. Confusion has resulted over the dates due to the final numeral of each painting's date being difficult to interpret. The 1851 date for Settling a Bill, Selling Corn (Private Collection) was read as 1857 by M. Bartlett Cowdrey in 1947 for the Wadsworth Athenaeum exhibition, before the Record Book was discovered, and repeated thereafter. The Shelburne Museum version has also been published with both the 1851 date (E. Johns, American Genre Painting, 1991, 56) and the 1857 date (George Henry Durrie, Connecticut Artist, New Haven Colony Historical Society, New Haven Conn., 1966, no. 61, 52 and repeated thereafter.) It is doubtful that Durrie was painting this exact composition as late as 1857. For further discussion, see M. Hutson, George Henry Durrie, 54, 56-57, 60, 186.
[7] Elizabeth Johns, American Genre Painting, The Politics of Everyday Life, 57.
[8] The political use of the initials O.K. was from an abbreviation of Martin Van Buren's hometown, Old Kinderhook, New York, and appeared in print in the New York publication, New Era, March 23, 1840.   
[9] Catalogue of a Fine Collection of Oil Paintings, Representing New England Winter Scenery, by our Favorite American Artist G. H. DURRIE, Auction at the Gallery of John Snedicor by Miner & Somerville, New York, New York, Dec. 22, 1862. For a complete list of the auction, see M. Hutson, George Henry Durrie, 203-205.