Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Crossing the Bridge

Samuel Palmer
1805-1881

Crossing the Bridge

1847
16 x 20 1/8 inches (406 x 511 mm)
Watercolor and opaque watercolor over graphite on wove paper.
2011.37

Purchased on the Sunny Crawford von Bülow Fund 1978.

Summary

This large, finished watercolor joins nine drawings in the collection by this English romantic artist; together, these sheets document virtually every phase of his long career. After a celebrated period at Shoreham, where he produced visionary landscapes, the artist traveled to Italy in 1837 before returning to live in London. There he developed a mastery of light and color, which he excercised in a body of idyllic, closely observed landscapes executed in watercolors. The present sheet dates to 1847, immediately following the artist's travels through the English countryside in Kent and Buckinghamshire. It depicts with a certain nostalgia a woman with child in hand, followed by a herd of goats, crossing an old stone bridge across a stream toward a mill.

Classification
Century Drawings
School
Department