Friday 14 October 2016

Samuel Palmer - part 2

1830 Samuel Palmer by George Richmond
graphite on beige wove paper 35.2 x 25.7 cm
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT
Samuel Palmer (1805 – 1881) English painter and etcher of visionary landscapes who was a disciple of William Blake.

This is part 2 of a 5 - part series on the works of Samuel Palmer. For full biographical notes, and for earlier works, see part 1 also.


1830c A Church among Trees
ink on card 15.2 x 18.4 cm
Tate, London

1830c A Village Church among Trees
black and grey wash on card 18.4 x 15.2 cm
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

1830c Cornfield by Moonlight
watercolour and gouache, with pen and ink, varnished

1830c In a Shoreham Garden
watercolour
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

1831-32 Shoreham, Kent
graphite and grey wash on moderately thick, smooth, cream wove paper 7.6 x 11.1 cm
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT

1831-32c The Harvest Moon: Drawing for ‘A Pastoral Scene’
ink and gouache on paper 15.2 x 18.4 cm
Tate, London

1833-34 The Golden Valley
watercolour, body-colour, gum arabic, gold paint, with ‘scratching out’ over pencil 12.9 x 16 cm

1833-35 A Pastoral Scene
oil and tempera on panel 30 x 40 cm
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK

1835 A Pastoral Scene
brown wash on wove paper 11.4 x 9.5 cm
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT


1831-33 Moonlight, a Landscape with Sheep
ink on card 15.2 x 18.3 cm
Tate, London

1832c A Road Past a Farm
6.7 x 13 cm

1833 The Harvest Moon
oil on panel 22.2 x 27.6 cm
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT

1833-34 The Shearers
oil and tempera on wood
Private Collection

1833-34 The Timber Wain
watercolour and gouache on cream wove paper 52.7 x 40 cm
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven CT

1833-34 The Weald of Kent
watercolour and gouache on cream wove paper 27 x 18.7 cm
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT

1833-34c A Cornfield bordered by Trees
oil on panel 17.5 x 14.9 cm
The Ashmolean Museum of Art, Oxford, UK

1833-34c The Bright Cloud
ink and watercolour on paper 22.9 x 30.5 cm
Tate, London

1833-34c The Bright Cloud
tempera on mahogany 23.3 x 32 cm
Manchester City Art Gallery, UK

1833-34c The White Cloud
oil on canvas 22.3 x 27.4 cm
The Asmolean Museum, Oxford, UK

1833c The Gleaning Field
tempera on Mahogany 30.5 x 45.4 cm
Tate, London

1834 Evening, engraved by Welby Sherman
mezzotint on paper 14.9 x 17.8 cm
Tate, London

1834 View of Lee, North Devon
oil on canvas 26.7 x 38.1 cm
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK

1835 Culbone, Somerset
watercolour, grey wash and gouache over black chalk and traces of pencil 29.4 x 38.8 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

1835 Mountains by the Traveller's Rest near Dolgelly
watercolour and gouache over graphite on beige wove paper
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT

1835 Pistil Mawddach, North Wales
black chalk and watercolour heightened with white on light buff paper 35.5 x 41 cm

1835 Pistil Mawddach, North Wales
watercolour, gouache and graphite 47 x 37.2 cm

1835-36 Pistil Mawddach, North Wales
watercolour, gouache and graphite with scratching out on cream wove paper 53.3 x 44.1 cm
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT

1835-36 The Waterfalls, Pistil Mawddach, North Wales
oil on canvas 40.6 x 26 cm
Tate, London


1835 Tintern Abbey
gouache and watercolour with pen and ink over graphite on cream wove paper 59.1 x 76.2 cm
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT

1835 Tintern Abbey
watercolour, gouache, brown ink and black chalk on white laid paper 37 x 48.6 cm
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

1835-36 Llwyngwynedd and Part of Llyn-y-ddina Between Capel Curig and Beddegelert, North Wales
gouache, watercolour, graphite and black chalk on wove brown paper 46 x 48.1 cm
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT

1835-36 Rocky Landscape in Wales
gouache and watercolour with traces of gum and black chalk on cream wove paper 47.9 x 37.9 cm
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT

1835c On the North Coast of Devon, Lundy Island in the Distance
watercolour and black chalk over graphite with touches of gouache 27.1 x 38 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

1836 Conway Castle
graphite, watercolour, gouache and pen and brown ink on on wove paper mounted on card 76.2 x 59.1 cm
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT

1837 Street of the Tombs, Pompeii
watercolour 30.2 x 42.2 cm
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

1837 The Villa D'Este, 1837
watercolour 17.3 x 37.4 cm
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

1837-39 The Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine from the Palatine, Rome
graphite and watercolour on paper 13.7 x 27.9 cm
Tate, London

after 1838 Italian Hill Town
watercolour and gouache over graphite on blue wove paper 32.1 x 23.5 cm
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT

1838 The Cypresses at the Villa d'Este, Tivoli
watercolour, gouache and graphite on blue wove paper 43.8 x 59.7 cm
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT

Wednesday 12 October 2016

Samuel Palmer - part 1

Self-Portrait
Samuel Palmer (1805 – 1881) English painter and etcher of visionary landscapes who was a disciple of William Blake.

Palmer’s father, a bookseller, encouraged him to become a painter. By 1819 he had already exhibited small landscape studies at the Royal Academy. The works that survive from 1819 to 1821 are able but conventional. In the following years, however, there are signs of a profound change in his thinking, perhaps connected with his conversion from the Baptist faith to a personal form of High Anglicanism and with his discovery of medieval art.

A sketchbook of 1824 (British Museum), rediscovered in 1956, already shows all the elements of his visionary style: a mystical but precise depiction of nature and an overflowing religious intensity, united by a vivid re-creation of the pastoral conventions. In October 1824 the painter John Linnell took him to see William Blake, who encouraged Palmer in the mystical direction he was taking and provided examples of his own work for Palmer to follow. Blake’s influence can be seen clearly in the “Repose of the Holy Family” (1824–25) and the series of sepia drawings of 1825.

1824-25 Repose of the Holy Family
oil on panel 31 x 39 cm
Ashmolean Museum of Art, Oxford, UK

In 1826 Palmer visited Shoreham in Kent, and the following year he settled there. His Shoreham paintings became more naturalistic but were still charged with visionary intensity. The years 1827–30 were his most productive, but after 1830 his work shows unmistakable signs of artistic decline. As his religious fervour faded, the precarious balance between realism and vision was lost. He left Shoreham for London in 1834, and expeditions to Wales and Italy confirmed the break with his own past.

The house in Shoreham, Kent, where Samuel Palmer lived
( photo copyright Poul Webb )

Palmer’s real forebears are writers rather than painters. He read with enthusiasm the writings of the German mystic Jakob Böhme, the pastoral poems of John Milton, and above all the works of John Bunyan, whose “Countrey of Beulah” is the nearest equivalent to Palmer’s “Valley of Vision.”
Biographical notes from Encyclopaedia Britannica

This is part 1 of a 5 - part series on the works of Samuel Palmer:

1795 Hecate, or The Night of Enitharmon's Joy by William Blake
pen and ink with watercolour on paper 44 x 58 cm
Tate, London

1819 Sketch from Nature in Sion Park
oil on card 32.7 x 27.6 cm
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT

1821 At Hailsham, Sussex: A Storm Approaching
watercolour and graphite on wove paper 59.7 x 43.8 cm
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT

1821 Evening
pen and bistre 19.2 x 26.8 cm
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

1824-35c Untitled sketch
india ink wash 13.6 x 17.8 cm approx
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

1824c Untitled Drawing
pen and ink on paper
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

1824c Harvest Celebration
ink sketch 11.7 x 19.1 cm
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

1824c Sunset
pen sketch 11.7 x 19.1 cm
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

1825 Early Morning
pen and ink wash with gum arabic and varnish 18.8 x 23.2 cm
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK

1825 Study of a Hand Holding a Knobbled Stick
pen and chalk sketch 10.2 x 7 cm
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

1825 The Rest on the Flight into Egypt
oil and tempera on panel
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK

1825 The Valley Thick with Corn
pen and brush in dark brown ink with gum arabic 18.2 x 27.5 cm


Painted shortly after he settled in Shoreham in Kent. The Darenth valley appeared to Palmer a perfect, neo-Platonic world and he called it the 'Valley of Vision'. In this picture he creates an ideal image of pastoral contentment, unaffected by the outside world. The unseasonal combination of flowering horse-chestnut and huge ripe heads of wheat symbolise fertility and the richness of the soil:

1826-28c A Hilly Scene
watercolour and gum arabic on paper mounted on wood 20.6 x 13.7 cm
Tate, London

1826c Harvest Under a Crescent Moon
wood engraving on cream laid paper 13.3 x 10.5 cm
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT

1826c Landscape, Girl Standing
ink and gouache on card 11.5 x 13.4 cm
Tate, London

1827 George Richmond Engraving "The Shepherd"
(see below)
pen and ink 12.7 x 11.7 cm
The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA

1827 The Shepherd by George Richmond
engraving on paper 17.8 x 11.4 cm
Tate, London

1827c A Moonlit Scene with a Winding River
black and brown wash, gouache, and gum on wove paper 18.1 x 26.7 cm
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT

1827c A Shepherd and his Flock under the Moon and Stars
pen and brown ink with grey washes heightened with white gouache on card 52.7 x 40 cm
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT

1828 Ancient Trees, Lullingstone Park
graphite on cream wove paper 37.1 x 26.7 cm
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT

1828 Oak Trees, Lullingstone Park
pen, brush, brown ink, graphite, watercolour, gouache and gum arabic on wove paper 29.5 x 46.8 cm
National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa

1828c A Country Road Leading Towards a Church
watercolour 18.4 x 15.2 cm
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

1828c An Ancient Barn at Shoreham
watercolour
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

1828c Ruth returned from Gleaning
pen and ink and wash, heightened with white 29.4 x 39.4 cm
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

1829 Pear Tree in a Walled Garden
watercolour and tempera over brush and grey wash, traces of graphite, on grey paper 22.2 x 28.3 cm
The Morgan Library and Museum, New York City

1829-30c A Kentish Idyll
brown wash on paper 8.9 x 10.8 cm
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

1829-30c Nocturnal Landscape with Full Moon and Deer
bodycolour and wash
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

1829c A Cow Lodge with a Mossy Roof
watercolour and gouache with pen and black ink on cream wove paper 59.7 x 43.8 cm
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT

1829c A Wooded Hillside at Underriver, near Sevenoaks, Kent
pen and ink sketch on paper, heightened with white 15.2 x 27.3 cm
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

1829c Cornfields with Barn, Shoreham
pen and brown ink with grey wash over graphite on cream wove paper 33 x 20 cm
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT

1829c The Bridge at Shoreham
pen and brown ink, brush and black and grey wash and white gouache, over graphite, on grey-brown paper 22.1 x 27.8 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

1829c The Primitive Cottage
pen and ink wash, heightened with white 22.4 x 30.2 cm
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

1830 Coming from Evening Church
tempera, chalk, gold, ink and graphite on gesso on paper 30.2 x 20 cm
Tate, London

1830 Harvesters by Firelight
pen and black ink with watercolour and gouache on wove paper 28.7 x 36.7 cm
National Gallery Of Art, Washington, DC

1830 Shepherd Under a Full Moon
pen and brown ink with brush in India Ink heightened with bodycolour on white card
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK

1830 The Magic Apple Tree
pen and Indian ink, and watercolour, which in some areas has been mixed with a gum-like medium on paper 34.9 x 27.3 cm
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK

1830 The Sleeping Shepherd
oil, tempera and chalk 39.4 x 51.8 cm

1830-35 View from Wilmot Hill, Kent
watercolour over black chalk on cream wove paper 24.6 x 36.5 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL