Noon; Resting Time

In this landscape, Palmer presents rural life through the lens of pastoral poetry, serene in mood and idyllic in setting. A group of children gather around a woman at the base of a tree, while sheep rest in the dappled sunlight nearby. Palmer varies his textures, paying attention to the dense leaves of the trees, the soft wool of the sheep, and the bristly fur of the calf. Made for an urban audience, such images of rural contentedness belie the reality of life in the English countryside during the nineteenth century. Industrialization was reducing the need for the traditional labor depicted here (2022).