Samuel Palmer | Romantic / Visionary painter

Samuel Palmer RWS Hon.RE (Hon. Fellow of the Society of Painter-Etchers) (1805-1881) was a British landscape painter, etcher and printmaker.

He was also a prolific writer.

Palmer was a key figure in Romanticism in Britain and produced visionary pastoral paintings.

Palmer painted churches from around age twelve, and first exhibited Turner-inspired works at the Royal Academy at the age of fourteen.

He had little formal training, and little formal schooling, although he was educated briefly at Merchant Taylors' School.

Legacy

Palmer was largely forgotten after his death.

In 1909, many of his Shoreham works were destroyed by his surviving son Alfred Herbert Palmer, who burnt "a great quantity of father's handiwork ... Knowing that no one would be able to make head or tail of what I burnt; I wished to save it from a more humiliating fate".

The destruction included "sketchbooks, notebooks, and original works, and lasted for days".

Interest in his work was rekindled in 1926 by a show curated by Martin Hardie at the Victoria and Albert Museum: Drawings, Etchings and Woodcuts made by Samuel Palmer and other Disciples of William Blake.

In the ensuing decades, the publication of two important books and the presentation of another London exhibition combined to trigger a surge in his popularity: Geoffrey Grigson's, Samuel Palmer: The Visionary Years (280 pages, with 68 photo illustrations, 1947),- the Arts Council of Great Britain’s 1956-57 exhibition: Samuel Palmer and his circle - The Shoreham period, and Grigson's follow-up, Samuel Palmer's Valley of Vision (forty-eight plates, a selection of Palmer's writings, 1960).

In the 1930s, the maximum price a Shoreham period drawing brought was around £50.

Three sold in the early 1960s - Weald of Kent, The Evening Star, and Cow Lodge with a Mossy Roof - for £6000, £5200, and £7200.

Leger Gallery purchased the diminutive watercolour The Golden Valley in 1969 for £14,000.

In a 2003 auction at Christie’s, it brought £587, 650.

The renewed popularity of his Shoreham work influenced a succession of English artists, notably F. L. Griggs, Robin Tanner, Graham Sutherland, Paul Drury, Joseph Webb, Eric Ravilious, John Minton, the glass engraving of Laurence Whistler, Franklin White and Clifford Harper.

He also inspired a resurgence in twentieth-century landscape printmaking, which began amongst students at Goldsmiths' College in the 1920s.| Source: © Wikipedia

Samuel Palmer (1805-1881) è stato un pittore paesaggista, incisore e scrittore Britannico.

Figura chiave del romanticismo britannico, Palmer fu presentato nel 1824 ad William Blake.

L'incontro fu decisivo, perché gli permise di scoprire la propria natura, incline al visionario.

Ritiratosi a Shoreham, nel Kent, dal 1827 al 1832, radunò intorno a sé un gruppo di giovani discepoli, entusiasti di Blake.

Al periodo di Shoreham appartiene la produzione più significativa di Palmer: una serie di acquarelli e di dipinti ad olio, in cui il tema della meditazione sulla natura è vissuto con animo bucolico ed è investito di una forte carica spirituale.

Tra le opere più celebri, Autoritratto (1828) Un giardino a Shoreham (1829) e Melo magico (1830).