Height: 197.000 mm
Width: 258.000 mm

PD 1985-5-4-1

Prints and Drawings

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Samuel Palmer

Samuel Palmer, Cornfield by Moonlight, with the Evening Star, watercolour and gouache, with brown ink, varnished

This is one of the largest and finest 'moonlight' paintings from Palmer's time at Shoreham. It shows a man with a smock, broad hat and staff walking with his dog through a cornfield that has already been cut and stacked in sheaves. The sky has a large waxing sickle moon and evening star, and the glimmering light lends the work an ethereal quality. Although the specific location is unknown, the rounded hills indicate that this was the countryside around Shoreham. The scene - with the figure contemplating the moon in awe - has religious undertones.

The picture is carefully composed, although the brush strokes are quite free and the colours rich. This type of work attracted the British Neo-Romantics in the mid-twentieth century to Palmer. The work was owned for part of the twentieth century by the art historian Sir Kenneth Clark, a great admirer of Palmer who died in 1983.