Material Oil on canvas
Dimensions 42 × 52 cm
Status Vetted

About the Work

'The Gleaning Field' captures the spirit of late summer in the English countryside and with it the essence of Samuel Palmer’s greatest works. Dating to around 1832-33, it was painted towards the end of the decade in which the London-born artist was living in the village of Shoreham in Kent and a member of an art movement comprising of a fellowship of nine friends who referred to themselves and The Ancients. Inspired by the visionary William Blake, they aimed for “a complete revival of art” which they felt could be achieved by returning to England’s older Gothic tradition, capturing a sense of the mythical in the natural world.

This is the splendour he sets out to capture in The Gleaning Field with its shifting moods of light, which conjures the moment a summer storm sweeps over a mown field of corn. A lowering sky intensifies the colours; golds and browns gather darker where rainclouds cast their shadows and the hills recede into a background of vaporous purples and blues.

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