Eventide

This watercolour dates from circa 1858. It is comparable in size and subject to The Sunset, or The Dip of the Sun, 1857 (see R. Lister, Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of Samuel Palmer, Cambridge, 1988, no. 546). Other comparable watercolours from this period include Fortune Telling – The Gypsy and the Waggoner (Huntingdon Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California) and Mountain Landscape at Sunset (private collection), Lister, op.cit. nos. 547 and 567 respectively. The pose of the reclining figure is very reminiscent of his earlier etching The Sleeping Shepherd- Early Morning, circa 1854-7, Lister, op.cit. E.6 which may have been based on Palmer's favourite marble sculpture in the British Museum, Endymion sleeping on Mount Latmos.