[1] Palmer began his formal artistic training under portrait painter Charles Loring Elliott, but it was Church, the period's premier landscape artist, who later tutored the young Palmer in landscape painting.

The artist continued to take frequent and lengthy trips to Europe, and acquired a growing interest in French Impressionism as well as an enduring attraction to Venetian subjects.

[2] When Palmer returned to the United States, he spent most of his time in Albany, where artists like William and James Hart, Homer Dodge Martin, and Edward Gay also painted.

[3] He also spent some time working out of New York City at the Tenth Street Studio Building.

Palmer's most notable works are winter landscape scenes, a tradition he continued from the mid-1880s to the end of his life.