A Woodland Study

An English Romantic painter who was best known for his visionary landscapes, Palmer may have created this monochromatic watercolor as a preparatory study for a print. It can be related to 13 delicate etchings made by the artist in the early 1850s. The watercolor was created with graphite underdrawing, over which several brown and black washes were laid down and then heightened by opaque white paint. To emphasize the contrast between light and dark, Palmer scraped pigment off the drawing as the final phase in this considered and complex artistic process.