George Henry Durrie was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1820. Along with his older brother John, he studied sporadically from 1839 to 1841 with the portrait painter, Nathaniel Jocelyn. From 1840 to 1842 he was an itinerant painter in Connecticut and New Jersey, finally settling permanently in New Haven. He produced roughly 300 paintings, of which the earliest were portraits; by the early 1850s, he had begun to paint the rural New England genre scenes and winter landscapes, which are considered his finest achievements. His landscapes are characterized by his use of pale, yet cheerful colors and by the repeated use of certain motifs: an isolated farmhouse, a hill in the distance, and a road set diagonally on the picture plane, leading the viewer’s eye into the composition. By the late 1850s, Durrie's reputation had grown, and he was exhibiting at prestigious institutions, such as the National Academy of Design. In 1861, Currier & Ives helped popularize his work by publishing prints of two of his winter landscapes, "New England Winter Scene" and "The Farmyard in Winter." Two more were published in 1863 and a further six after his death that same year.

This oil on canvas is exemplary of Durrie’s noted painting style. A dirt road, left of center leading up, visually immerses the viewer into the landscape. The scantily-colored hills in the distance add an incredible sense of depth, yet also aid the scene’s soothing, languid atmosphere. The artist’s generous use of soft, unsaturated yellow and green hues, paired with a pale, almost white-yellow sky, produce subtle yet naturalistic lighting. This is beautifully contrasted by the lone subject fishing in a creek bed, graced with dark undertones, playing a complementary, rather than central role in the painting’s overall composition while still alluding to an important American past-time.