The Golden Hour
1865
Samuel Palmer
Samuel Palmer (British, 1805–1881)
Drawings
The Golden Hour, 1865. Samuel Palmer (British, 1805–1881). Watercolor and gouache with graphite and scraping; sheet: 25.6 x 35.4 cm (10 1/16 x 13 15/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund 2009.3 Samuel Palmer developed a personal and emotionally charged style of landscape painting that celebrated nature as the product of divine creation. This watercolor of a spectacularly colorful sunset over the hills of Surrey was painted by Palmer toward the end of his life. An autumn sky heavy with rows of cumulus clouds shimmers in a pattern of pink and amethyst, as slivers of golden light emanate from the setting sun. The idyllic landscape is an elegy not only to a passing day, but to the brevity of life itself. Around the time this watercolor was made, Samuel Palmer began to focus primarily on naturalistic landscapes that he hoped would be commercially successful in order to contend with the practical responsibilities of married life and family.
- Maker/Artist
- Palmer, Samuel
- Classification
- Drawing
- Formatted Medium
- watercolor and gouache with graphite and scraping
- Medium
- watercolor, gouache, graphite, scraping
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 25.6 x 35.4 cm (10 1/16 x 13 15/16 in.)
- Inscribed
- Inscription: signed, in brown watercolor, at lower left: S. Palmer; inscribed, in graphite, on verso: Never let drawinsg on London Board be thinned by removing paper from the back. / This drawing would be unchanged after 3 centuries if the frame were in / a folding ["folding" crossed out] case with a door -- unnecessary exposure to light avoided. See Missals in B. Museum / SP
- Departments
- Drawings
- Accession Number
- 2009.3
- Credit Line
- The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund
- Rights Statement
- CC0
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