Monday, April 3, 2017

Samuel Palmer

Samuel Palmer
Tree trunks
1824
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Samuel Palmer
Landscape
ca. 1825-35
wash drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

"Palmer's expressed desire to 'never be a naturalist' placed him at an awkward angle to the mainstream of landscape painting in the age in which he lived. It was a time that saw great advances in empirical science, and much store was placed on the dedicated investigation of nature. For the most part it was understood that landscape, whether ideal or realistic in approach, based its rationale on detailed and accurate observation. By the time that Palmer was beginning his career, the main ground was being won by those who claimed that the landscape painter should not only begin with the faithful observation of nature (the common premise) but should end with this as well. This was the position proclaimed by Constable with his call for a 'natural painture'. His work had become, particularly since his successful exhibition of The Haywain in 1821, a rallying point for the supporters of the view that landscape should address the observable and the everyday. . . . Palmer, by contrast, followed Blake in believing that the naturalist perceived only what he referred to as 'visible creation', that is, the surface, rather than the essence of things. Such materialists could have no access to the 'higher realities' that lay for Blake largely beyond the access of direct observation and could be engaged only through the imagination."

 from Samuel Palmer : Shadows on the Wall by William Vaughan (Yale University Press, 2015)

Samuel Palmer
Ruth returned from gleaning
1828
watercolor
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Samuel Palmer
Traveling in the Holy Land
ca. 1835
watercolor
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Samuel Palmer
Villa d'Este, Tivoli
1837
watercolor
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Samuel Palmer
Street of the Tombs, Pompei
1837
watercolor
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Samuel Palmer
Rome from the Borghese Gardens
1837
watercolor
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Samuel Palmer
Saint Catherine's Fair, Guildford
1844
watercolor
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Samuel Palmer
A harvest field
ca. 1850
watercolor
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Samuel Palmer
Cornwall
1858
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Samuel Palmer
Woman driving sheep
ca. 1860
watercolor
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Samuel Palmer
The towered city
1868
sepia wash
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Samuel Palemr
The eastern gate
1879
sepia wash
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Samuel Palmer
The waters murmuring
before 1881
sepia wash
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

"When an artist sees at last what he ought to do, and gathers himself up for the effort, I believe it is a sign that his days are numbered."

 Samuel Palmer