The Harvest Moon

Palmer’s son Alfred Herbert, his biographer and the owner of this picture, called it “full of Shoreham sentiment” and “not without some of the accompanying peculiarities”; the museum notes that Palmer was largely ignored by critics and the public during his lifetime, and that his landscapes are now understood as a highly individualistic view of nature. The title names the full moon nearest the autumnal equinox, whose early rise gave agricultural workers precious extra time to bring in the harvest. Palmer built the surface with layers of oil paint, tempera and graphite, seeking spiritual fulfilment outside traditional religious doctrine and revering nature as evidence of divine creation. The picture is signed at the lower left, “S. PALMER,” and was formerly known simply as Harvest Moon. It came to the Yale Center for British Art with the Paul Mellon Collection.