ABSTRACT
In the early 1840s, George Henry Durrie started using snow to stop time. This chapter presents an ecocritical reading that considers snow, a typically unquestioned precipitate of winter, within a deeper spectrum of materiality and meaning. The artist molded snow into a passive foil for rising spirits and fortunes, making cold hardships all the sweeter to overcome. Cryoscapes reflect both the repressed material agency of snow as well as the fantasy that representing it amounts to the control of natural time itself. Painting “as a lover of Nature’s God,” Durrie had to weigh the ambivalent spiritual implications of his cryoscapes. Winter in the Country, a canvas from 1857, epitomizes Durrie’s reliable snow scene formula, in which life appears to soldier on through the year’s harshest months. Durrie’s paintings thus register as icons of domestic stability and antebellum peace for a generation that saw the social fabric unraveling before its eyes.
