The Golden Hour (1865): Art, History and Details

The Golden Hour (1865) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Samuel Palmer (British, 1805–1881).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

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.

Object facts

• Title: The Golden Hour
• Date: 1865
• Creator attribution: Samuel Palmer (British, 1805–1881)
• Culture: England, 19th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: watercolor and gouache with graphite and scraping
• Dimensions: Sheet: 25.6 x 35.4 cm (10 1/16 x 13 15/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - British
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2009.3

A detail from the museum

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.

Collection credit

The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Wilton, Andrew. The Fitch Collection. Exh. Cat. London: Leger Galleries, 1988.
• Palmer, Alfred Herbert. Samuel Palmer: A Memoir. London: Fine Art Society, 1882
• Palmer, Alfred Herbert. The Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer, Painter and Etcher. London: Eric & Joan Stevens, 1972.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.