SAMUEL
PALMER R.W.S. (1805 – 1881)
“The Herdsman’s Cottage”
Original Etching. Lister 3.II
Hammerton wrote of this etching in his book on Etchers & Etchings in
1880:
“In
its own way it is like some pearl or diamond without
flaw,
but pearls & diamonds are very common things upon the earth
in comparison with etchings of this quality” IMAGE
“The Early Ploughman”
Original Etching. Lister 9.
State VIII of IX
Published Etchers and Etching 1868 IMAGE
Samuel
Palmer was born in 1805 at Newington. He
was the son of a bookseller and was one of the most original landscape painters
of the British School. He first
exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1819. The most important early influences on
his life were Stothard, Varley,
Linnell, Mulready and,
above all, Blake, whom he met in 1824. In that
year he and his father were living in Shoreham, Kent, the inspiration for his most perfect primitive and visionary work. For a time he formed one of the
"Ancients" who gathered there around Blake. In 1837 he married Linnell's
daughter Hannah and they went to Italy, returning in 1839.
Thereafter he attempted to make a living by teaching and exhibiting, and
made sketching tours throughout Britain, particularly in Devon, Cornwall and North Wales. He attempted to simplify
his work, taking de Wint as a model, and worked up
many of the careful drawings made in Italy. He was elected Associate of the Old Watercolour Society in
1845, rising to full Membership eleven years later. In 1861 his life and style underwent another
change following the death of his eldest son, More,
and something of the early inspiration returned, showing itself
particularly in his etchings. It has long been the fashion to decry Palmer's
post-Italian work and to claim that his individual vision was destroyed by Linnell. This is
hardly true. Linnell
had a bad influence on his personal life, but generally a good one on his
work. The Shoreham period with its hot
and even garish colours, its great balloons of blossom and
sense of the summer of youth, could not last beyond youth. Palmer, like Blake,
was a lover of gold, and often tried to work it into his sunsets. He also felt that a landscape was nothing
without figures, and generally introduced them if only in a subordinate
role. Like Turner, he was concerned with
light, like Cotman with essential form. It is in the refining of the diverse
influences upon him that his originality lies. Examples of work by Samuel
Palmer are in the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Aberdeen Art Gallery, the Ashmolean Museum, Williamson Art Gallery Birkenhead; Birmingham City Art Gallery, Blackburn Art Gallery, Cartwright Hall Bradford, City Art Gallery Manchester, the New
Gallery Scotland and Ulster Museum.
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