AFA Winter 2019

Winter 94 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com The wheat fields surrounding the town of Chantilly, north of Paris, had captured Palmer’s attention since his first journey to Europe during the years 1873 and 1874. Contained within a bound volume of sketches from that excursion, now at the Albany Institute, is a pen and ink drawing dated and inscribed “Chantilly/May 15, ‘74/near Paris,” which closely resembles the overall composition of this later pastel. Another pen and ink sketch of the same wheat field but with the addition of a lone female figure is pasted into a scrapbook the artist kept. That sketch became the model for an 1881 oil painting known as Wheatfield near Chantilly . The Albany Institute’s later pastel is a reworking of that landscape. The figure is gone; the cut and sheafed section of wheat has become smaller. But most noticeably, Palmer added bright red patches of corn poppies that enliven the landscape with color. At a distance the pastel landscape looks like a fine oil painting with quickly applied dabs and flicks of paint applied with a small or medium-sized brush. Only on closer inspection does it become evident that the landscape is built up from a rainbow palette of pastels, all applied with the deft hand of a painter. Walter Launt Palmer (1854–1932), Wheatfield with Poppies, 1889–1890. Pastel on composition board, 22 x 31 inches. Albany Institute of History & Art; Gift of the estate of Catharine Gansevoort Lansing (1919.4.23).