Walter Launt Palmer was born in Albany, NY in 1854. He was the son of the famous sculptor Erastus Dow Palmer. Through his father, Walter became acquainted with Frederic Edwin Church, John F. Kensett, and John Jarvis McEntee, all well-known landscape painters during the late nineteenth century.

Walter began his formal art training under the supervision of Church in 1878 which led him to Europe to study in Italy and France. He was fascinated with the works of the Impressionists as well as John Singer Sargent, John Henry Twatchman, William Merritt Chase, Frank Duveneck, and Robert Blum.

Wing and Wing, 1890, is a scene of a wooden sailboat with a golden yellow sail on the Adriatic Sea. The city of Venice is situated on the horizon line. The palette is one of immense beauty and light, and portrays the influence of Church with the yellow sail blending in with the sky, and the Impressionistic ripples in the blue, green, purple, white, and yellow water.