American Art Collaborative

Palmer specialized in marble sculptures of girls. Here he deftly handled the contrast between high and low relief carving so that his young subject seems to emerge shyly from behind her bed curtains. Details like the puffiness around her eyes, indicative of recent sleep, lend an air of realism to this sentimental object. A German critic wrote in 1867 that “among modern works of genre sculpture, I know of none that can be compared with Good Morning.”