The Palmer

Growing up in town, I’ve made numerous trips to the Palmer. Whether it was on a field trip or something my family wanted to do on a rainy day,  I found myself walking these halls every year or so from elementary school until the end of middle school. Walking these vaguely familiar halls brought back some fond memories for me. This visit was once again a pleasant experience as the Palmer is like many other museums but with one huge advantage….. less crowds. Maybe it’s just my experiences with museums but they always seem to have so many people but not the Palmer, you can just enjoy the art without being jostled constantly.

                Having been at the Palmer so many times I had some difficulty deciding on an interesting piece to write about. The obviously interesting pieces I remembered so they seemed less interesting to me while many others seemed quite mundane…. a earthenware  jar without any distinct characteristics, so exciting. Ultimately I settled on a painting done by Robert Salmon titled The Lowlight, Moonlight from 1828. This painting had a foreboding yet hopeful vibe to it upon my first glance. The sun is about to set on the right, shining into the bay, flanked by the edge of a moored ship to the far right and a light house preparing for night in the center of the piece. The light house serves as a divider from the light hopeful right and the dark foreboding left. To the left of the light house was town consisting almost exclusively of what appears to be factories. The dark clouds seem to be rolling away from the right to the left. The bottom edge of the painting depicts a boy and a man in a top hat on the shore holding a mooring line for the ship at the right edge of the piece. Beside them on the far left of the beach is an obviously damaged ship (broken masts and missing sections of railing) being repaired.

                The painting is making a statement about the industrial revolution. The darkness represents the era before industrialization, a sort of “dark age.” While the right shows hope for the future while at the same time commenting with the setting sun that this era will too draw to close perhaps later than the artist realized. The broken ship is speaking to how the past appears with the new ideas and inventions of the early 19^th century.

                The artist, Robert Salmon, was a British painter who immigrated to the United States in the late 1820’s who painted mostly maritime scenes. But his life span stretched almost the entire length of the industrial revolution and growing up in England (where the revolution began) would have given him a unique perspective of the era giving him more credibility than someone trying to depict that time today.

                I once again enjoyed my visit to the Palmer and will be going back at some point so I can take my time instead of looking for a piece to write about. I love museums and the Palmer is one of my favorites and despite its limited collection has a surprising range of items.