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The Golden Hour
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this 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.
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineThe Golden Hour, 1865. Samuel Palmer (British, 1805–1881). Watercolor and gouache with graphite and scraping; sheet: 25.6 x 35.4 cm (10 1/16 x 13 15/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund, 2009.3
