The Harvest Moon - YCBA Collections Search

Samuel Palmer, 1805–1881, British, active in Italy (1837–39), The Harvest Moon, ca. 1833

Creator:: Samuel Palmer, 1805–1881
Title:: The Harvest Moon
Former Title(s):: Harvest Moon
Date:: ca. 1833
Materials & Techniques:: Oil on paper, laid on panel
Dimensions:: 8 3/4 × 10 7/8 inches (22.2 × 27.6 cm), Frame: 11 1/2 × 13 1/2 inches (29.2 × 34.3 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:: Signed, lower left: "S. PALMER"
Credit Line:: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:: Public Domain
Accession Number:: B1977.14.65
Classification:: Paintings
Collection:: Paintings and Sculpture
Link to Frame:: B1977.14.65FR
Subject Terms:: agriculture | astronomy | bales | costume | field | gathering | genre subject | gold (color) | grain | harvest | laborers | landscape | light | night | science | stars | women | workers
Access:: Not on view
Link:: https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:414
Export:: XML
IIIF Manifest:: JSON

Samuel Palmer was one of the most innovative artists in the early nineteenth century, producing visionary works that were inspired by his deep religious faith. This small picture of harvesting by moonlight encapsulates Palmer’s romantic vision of country life. A brilliantly lit full moon shines in the night sky, giving the laborers extra time to gather their harvest. But this idyllic vision of the countryside was far removed from the actual conditions of agricultural laborers during this period. Prolonged recession after the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the introduction of new machinery led to widespread unemployment and severe unrest.

Gallery Label for installation of permanent YCBA collection, 2016

Samuel Palmer sought spiritual fulfillment outside of traditional religious doctrine, instead revering nature as evidence of divine creation. He transformed familiar motifs, such as trees, valleys, peasants, and the night sky, into visionary landscapes. In The Harvest Moon, Palmer portrayed laborers bundling sheaves of corn into the night, an agricultural practice that was common at the time during harvest season. But the composition is not simply a naturalistic representation of peasant labor; bathed in the celestial amber light of the full moon and painted in an unpretentious style, the scene assumes a mystical quality. The ghostly bodies of the peasants express none of the toil of their labor but rather seem to dance with the rhythm of nature.

Gallery label for the Critique of Reason: Romantic Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2015-03-06 - 2015-07-26)

Harvest Moon encapsulates Palmer's vision of country life. The scene shows the harvest by night, with laborers tying up sheaves of corn to load on the wagon in the foreground. In the night sky shines the large and brilliantly lit full moon of the autumnal equinox, illuminating the cornfield and allowing the laborers extra time to gather in their harvest. But this idyllic vision of the countryside was quite removed from the actual conditions of the early nineteenth-century agrarian economy. After Waterloo and the end of the Napoleonic Wars, mass unemployment led to severe unrest, with unemployed laborers smashing machines and carrying out arson attacks on farm owners across the country.

Gallery label for Connections (Yale Center for British Art, 2011-05-26 - 2011-09-11)

This magical canvas conveys some of the qualities that have made Palmer’s work so appreciated in the twentieth century. Largely ignored by critics and the public during his lifetime, Palmer’s landscapes are now understood to represent a highly individualistic view of nature. Here, the landscape vibrates with light and activity, belying the calm of the traditional night scene. The full moon nearest the autumnal equinox rises quickly after sunset. This moon allows agricultural workers precious time to finish gathering crops before the end of the season, and it is hence known as the Harvest Moon. Underneath the shimmering full moon and a canopy of stars, a cluster of figures gathers wheat, their variously bending and twisting bodies suggesting an almost feverish labor. Palmer has built up the surface of the image with layers of oil paint, tempera, and graphite, further adding to the visual sensation of abundance and activity.

Gallery label for Paul Mellon's Legacy: A Passion for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2007-04-18 - 2007-07-29)

Alfred Herbert Palmer, the artist’s son and biographer, who owned “The Harvest Moon”, described it as a typical example “full of Shoreham sentiment” and “not without some of the accompanying peculiarities.” He went on to comment, “There is nothing out of place in the laden wagon with its team of oxen, or in the harvest labourers, for their dress proclaims them labourers of long ago” (Palmer, 1892, pp. 46–47). Christiana Payne has countered the suggestion that the subject may be anachronistic or may be intended to evoke an earlier time, by noting that oxen continued to be used in parts of Britain throughout the nineteenth century and that the smocks worn by the harvesters were standard dress in the period.

Although the depiction of harvesting by moonlight seems characteristic of Palmer in the Shoreham period and undoubtedly contributes to the visionary intensity of the scene, Payne also indicates that workers continuing into the night to bring in the harvest had a basis in actual agricultural practice. What does seem fanciful is the crowding of the workers, men and women together, with no open space to set the sheaves—artistic license to emphasize the bounty of the harvest (Payne, 1993, p. 102).

Scott Wilcox

John Baskett, Paul Mellon's Legacy: a Passion for British Art: Masterpieces from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, pp. ii & 296, no. 114, N5220 M552 P38 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA)

Rachel Rose: Goodnight Moon (SITE Santa Fe, 2023-06-02 - 2023-09-11) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Rachel Rose (Gladstone Gallery, 2022-01-14 - 2022-03-01) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

The Critique of Reason : Romantic Art, 1760–1860 (Yale University Art Gallery, 2015-03-06 - 2015-07-26) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Connections (Yale Center for British Art, 2011-05-26 - 2011-09-11) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

An American's Passion for British Art - Paul Mellon's Legacy (Royal Academy of Arts, 2007-10-20 - 2008-01-27) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

An American's Passion for British Art - Paul Mellon's Legacy (Yale Center for British Art, 2007-04-18 - 2007-07-29) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Samuel Palmer 1805-1881 Vision and Landscape (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006-03-07 - 2006-05-28) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Samuel Palmer 1805-1881 Vision and Landscape (British Museum, 2005-10-21 - 2006-01-22) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

John Baskett, Paul Mellon's Legacy: a Passion for British Art: Masterpieces from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, pp. ii & 296, no. 114, N5220 M552 P38 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Christie's sale catalogue : Catalogue of Modern Pictures and Water Colour Drawings : 20 March 1909, Christie's, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, March 20, 1909, p. 14, Lot 84, Fiche B51, Fiche# 1348 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Christie's Sale Catalogue : Highly Important English Pictures c.1600 - c. 1850 : 23 June 1972, Christie's, 1972, p. 28, lot 65, pl. 65, Auction Catalogues (YCBA) [YCBA]

Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 176-177, N590.2 A83 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Frank Davis, Talking about Sale-Rooms : Samuel Palmer's Poetic Vision, , Country Life, vol. 152, October 26, 1972, pp. 1052-53, fig. 3, S3 C68 + (YCBA) [YCBA]

Lindsay Duguid, The Recollected Works, TLS, the Times Literary Supplement, Issue no. 5458, November 8, 2007, p. 17, Available Online : TLS Archive Also Available on microfilm : Film S748 (SML) [ORBIS]

David Ebony, Samuel Palmer's Luminous Garden, Art in America, vol. 94, no. 9, October 2006, pp. 148-49, N1 A43 (LC)+ Oversize (HAAS) Some volumes are also available Online (ORBIS) [ORBIS]

Exhibition Catalogue. 1833. 65th., Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts, no. 65, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1833, p. 8, no. 64, N5054 A53 v. 4 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Geoffrey Grigson, Samuel Palmer, Studio, vol. 128, December 1944, pp. 170-75, J10 +St94 (LSF) Other Campus locations including YCBA hold the journal but lack this volume; only copy appears to be in LSF [ORBIS]

Geoffrey Grigson, Samuel Palmer, the visionary years. , K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & co., ltd., London, 1947, pp. 93, 110, 186, no. 129, NJ18 P19 G75 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Matthew Hargraves, Matthew Hargraves on Samuel Palmer's The Harvest Moon, , January 19, 2012, 0 minutes, 13 seconds, http://www.youtube.com/v/xv8G87YnN4k [Website]

Harvest Moon (art reproduction), Apollo, London, England, {front} p. 19, N1 +A54 M57 Oversize (YCBA) [YCBA]

Simon Jenkins, Skip the Secular Rituals of the Turner Prize for a Real Radical, The british Museum's Exhibition of the Painter Samuel Palmer is an Exhilarating Vision of Archaic Beauty , Guardian (Manchester, England), October 31, 2005, See below, Film AN M312 (SML) Also Available Online (Factiva) [ORBIS]

Raymond Lister, A catalogue raisonne of the works of Samuel Palmer, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK; New York, NY, 1988, p. 91, no. 168, NJ18 P19 A12 L57 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Raymond Lister, The paintings of Samuel Palmer, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [Cambridgeshire] New York, 1985, no. 25, ND497.P3 [ORBIS]

Morton D. Paley, The Art of The Ancients, Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 52, no. 1, Winter, 1989, pp 106, 145, fig. 30, Z783 S25 H45 Also Available Online (JSTOR); Plates and Figures are at the end of the issue [ORBIS]

Alfred Herbert Palmer, The life and letters of Samuel Palmer, painter and etcher, Seeley, London, 1892, pp. 46-47, NJ18 P19 P35 (YCBA) Also have 1972 reprint edition: NJ18 P19 P35 1972 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Paul Mellon's Legacy : a passion for British art [large print labels], , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, v. 3, N5220 M552 P381 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Christiana Payne, ' A mild, a grateful, an unearthly lustre ', Samuel Palmer and the Moon , Burlington Magazine, vol. 154, no. 1310, May 2012, pp. 334, 335, fig. 32, N1 B87 + OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Christiana Payne, Earth : digging deep in British art, 1781-2022, Sansom and Co., Bristol, 2022, pp. 8, 9, fig. 4, N8214.5 G7 P39 2022 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Christiana Payne, Toil and plenty : images of the agricultural landscape in England, 1780-1890, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1993, pp.16, 55, 102-3, no. 20, pl. 13, ND1354.4 P39 1993 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Samuel Palmer, Temple Bar, vol. 97, no. 386, January, 1893, p. 85, A88 T24 (SML) Also available Online(Britidsh Periodicals database) [ORBIS]

Samuel Palmer, Tate Publishing, London, p. 47, fig. 39, NJ18.P19 W55 2005 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Simon Schama, The Yale Centre for British Art, TLS, the Times Literary Supplement, , May 20, 1977, p. 620, TLS Historical Archive [ORBIS]

William Vaughan, Samuel Palmer : shadows on the wall, The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, New Haven, 2015, p. 204, fig. 174, NJ18.P19 V37 2015 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

William Vaughan, Samuel Palmer, 1805-1881 : vision and landscape, , British Museum Press, London, 2005, p. 154, no. 81, pl. 81, Nj18 P19 V38 2005 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Yale Center for British Art, Selected paintings, drawings & books, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1977, p. 46, N590.2 A82 (YCBA) [YCBA]

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