Palmer

Walter Launt

Round Hill Road, Moreland Estate is a quintessential work by Palmer, long considered America’s foremost painter of snow scenes.  Palmer did not normally work in Connecticut but this was probably commissioned by Charles Arthur Moore of Greenwich to do this work.  Many of Palmer’s snow scenes depict cedars with the glow of dawn or twilight behind them. Moore was probably enamored of these views and asked for a specific one done from his property.

 

Walter Launt Palmer is considered to be one of the most influential and under-recognized American Impressionists of the 20th century.  By the time his beautiful mastery of subtle color, texture and light were mastered, Palmer’s winter scenes were much sought after and already owned by several museums.

 

Born in 1854 to famous sculptor Erastus Dow Palmer, Walter was influenced at an early age by his father as well as his father’s artist friends who would occasionally stop by the studio.   At age 24, Walter began a formal study with famed Hudson River Valley artist Frederick Church who would become an incredible influence on his studies.

 

By the mid 1870’s, Palmer found himself studying the Impressionists in Italy and France as well as other expatriate American artists in Europe.  He developed a friendship with John Singer Sargent with whom he went on at least one sketching trip.

 

By late 1878, Palmer was renting a studio with Church back in the United States.  He had gained national recognition with his winter scenes in 1887, a subject matter that would be forever tied to his artistic reputation.  His use of blue shadow in the snow was one of the first occasions this technique was used for in American Impressionism.  By the turn of the century, Palmer was being compared with Claude Monet and John Henry Twatchman.

 

Palmer had taken up summer residence in Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1915.  His “studio by the sea” on Rocky Neck in Gloucester Harbor was visited often by clients and fellow artists from the local art colony.  He was considered the celebrity of the group because of his national recognition.  People and writers would comment on the oddity in which he would sit on the dock in summer painting a snow-covered scene as if he were in the midst of a blistery day in January.

 

Palmer died in Albany, New York at the age of 78.  By the end of World War II, Palmer’s representational style had shockingly fallen out of favor with the minimalist décor of the 1960’s.  Museums even deaccessed a few of his works to acquire more modern pieces.

 

In the last 20 years Palmer’s works have once again been given the recognition they deserve and his paintings are considered some of the finest works of American art.

(1854 - 1932)