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The Golden Hour
Samuel Palmer1865
The Cleveland Museum of Art
Cleveland, United States
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.
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Details
- Title: The Golden Hour
- Creator: Samuel Palmer (British, 1805-1881)
- Date Created: 1865
- Physical Dimensions: Sheet: 25.6 x 35.4 cm (10 1/16 x 13 15/16 in.)
- Provenance: George Gurney, (sale, Christie's, London, March 17, 1883, no. 182), Private Collection, England, (sale, Sotheby's, London, November 14, 1962, no. 41), The Fine Art Society, London, Dr. Mark Fitch, (Leger Galleries, Ltd., London), Private Collection, England, (Lowell Libson, London, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH), Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
- Type: Drawing
- Rights: CC0
- External Link: https://clevelandart.org/art/2009.3
- Medium: watercolor and gouache with graphite and scraping
- Inscriptions: 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
- Fun Fact: 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.
- Department: Drawings
- Culture: England, 19th century
- Credit Line: The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund
- Collection: DR - British
- Accession Number: 2009.3
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