The Early Ploughman, or Morning Spread Upon the Mountains
begun before 1861
Medium
Etching; fifth state of nine
Dimensions
sheet: 7 x 10 5/16 in. (17.8 x 26.2 cm) plate: 7 x 9 7/8 in. (17.8 x 25.1 cm) image: 5 3/16 x 7 3/4 in. (13.1 x 19.7 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Theodore De Witt, 1923
Accession Number
23.65.6
Tags
Art Historical Context
**The Early Ploughman or Morning Spread Upon the** is a captivating etching by Samuel Palmer, a British artist renowned for his Romantic pastoral scenes. Begun before 1861, this work captures the poetic beauty of rural labor at dawn, with a lone ploughman guiding his team of animals through misty mountains, framed by ancient trees. Palmer, influenced by William Blake and his own "Shoreham Ancients" circle, infused his landscapes with spiritual intensity, blending realism with an almost mystical glow that evokes the divine harmony of nature and human toil. As the fifth state of nine in this et...
About the Artist
Samuel Palmer
Samuel Palmer was born on 27 January 1805 in Newington, London, the son of a bookseller and sometime Baptist minister. He had little formal schooling and almost no conventional artistic training, yet he possessed an instinctive gift for drawing that led him to exhibit Turner-inspired works at the Royal Academy when he was only fourteen years old. In 1824 his mentor, the painter John Linnell, intro...