Hurley Old Schoolhouses and Winslow Homer (1836 -1910)

The Country School, 1871

Oil on canvas, 21.2 x 38.2 in

St. Louis Art Museum collection

(courtesy of the Hurley Heritage Society)

Class is in full session. In this era, the boys and girls sat on opposite sides of the room. The unhappy boy on the right-hand side is apparently being punished by being told to sit with the girls. The view from the school's window in this painting is similar to the “mountain” version of Snap the Whip, and the young boy with his face in a book is the same boy standing in the door in School Time. Both of these elements connect the painting to Hurley's Eagle's Nest one-room schoolhouse. However, the interior is not the rustic interior of a rural schoolhouse. Rather, the vaulted ceiling and large windows suggest that Homer modeled the interior after a more formal school building, possibly one like the District #4 school on Zandhoek Road which served the village of Hurley. See Then-and-Now photographs