AFA Winter 2019

Antiques & Fine Art 95 2019 Early in 1892, Palmer debuted this, his largest canvas. It was an unusual subject for Palmer, but his move away from Venetian scenes and winter landscapes proved to be a good decision as the painting received critical approval in both Albany, where it went on view in February at Annesley’s Art Gallery, and in New York, at the National Academy exhibition. The landscape takes the viewer to the edge of the Delaware River, where low morning sunlight rakes across the terrain forming elongated shadows and shrouding the opposite hillside in a hazy violet mist. John G. Myers, owner of an Albany department store, lent the painting to the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, where it won a first prize out of the more than nine thousand pictures entered. The painting’s success must have brought some much needed joy into Palmer’s life, as he lost his wife, Georgianna, and newly born infant, Jessie, during childbirth in July 1892. Walter Launt Palmer (1854–1932), Autumn Morning—Mist Clearing Away, 1892. Oil on canvas, 38¼ x 52¼ inches. Albany Institute of History & Art; Gift of the estate of Dr. Leonard G. Stanley (1959.145).