Questroyal 2009

Walter Launt Palmer ( 1854 – 1932 ) Plate 34 Winter Haze Oil on canvas 30 x 30 inches Signed lower left: W. L. Palmer provenance Private collection, Pennsylvania exhibited Century Association, NewYork, 1917 literature Maybelle Mann, Walter Launt Palmer: Poetic Reality (Exton, Pa.: 1984 ), p. 142 , no. 695 . More than anything else, to live with a Palmer painting is an experience. maybelle mann, independent scholar , 1984 1 Novel arrangements, unusual handling of his material, and a fresh way of seeing his motive, all have tended to produce attractive results much out of the commonplace. The NewYork Times, 1895 2 All the minute detail that his eye can see interests him, and he does not fail to reproduce it . . . it is not the snow of Europe damply evaporating into a leaden sky, but the New England article, crisp and dry in the keen cold and shining dazzling white against the blue horizon. samuel isham, artist and author of History of American Painting, 1905 3 Painting fromMemory In 1887 , Walter Launt Palmer wrote the following in his diary: “Went to visit the Tolls, near Schenectady for two days or so & studied and photographed Winter effects. This proved to be one of the most fortunate events profes- sionally that ever happened to me, as I immediately commenced painting Winter pictures from which I have made my greatest successes.” 4 Indeed, Palmer’s assertion that winter paintings were his “greatest successes” proved to be more than hopeful speculation: his winter scenes remained popular throughout his career. Surprisingly, Palmer painted these works from memory, not from nature, relying solely on notes, photographs, and his own imagination to capture such images as Winter Haze . — agr Walter Launt Palmer’s paintings are found in the collections of the Fine ArtsMuseums of San Francisco, The MetropolitanMuseum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 1 Maybelle Mann, Walter Launt Palmer: Poetic Reality (Exton, Pa.: Schiffer, 1984 ), p. 10. 2 “Pictures byWalter L. Palmer,” The NewYork Times , December 5 , 1895 . 3 Samuel Isham, History of American Painting (NewYork: MacMillan, 1905 ), pp. 440 , 443 . Quoted in Mann, p. 46 . 4 Diary of Walter Launt Palmer, 1887 . Quoted in Mann, p. 45 .