This 'primitive and infantine feeling' (his own words) for landscape began to fade c.1832: in 1837 he married the daughter of John Linnell and visited Italy, and his son later wrote of these events: 'After the Shoreham and Italian periods, the whole of my father's life became a dreadful tragedy'; but this view is now regarded as a melodramatic overstatement. His early work has influenced many Romantic painters, e.g. Sutherland: examples are in London (BM, V&A, Tate, Courtauld Inst.), Cambridge, Cardiff, Manchester, Oxford, Philadelphia, Yale (CBA), and elsewhere.

In 1976 T. Keating claimed to have forged several Palmer drawings.