Samuel Palmer: Vision and Landscape

By Elizabeth E. BarkerColin HarrisonWilliam Vaughan, et al.

Book Overview

Revised and expanded version of the Samuel Palmer title first published in 1999The collection of paintings, drawings, watercolors, and etchings by Samuel Palmer in the Ashmolean Museum is the most important in the world

The art of Samuel Palmer is essentially a discovery of the 20th century. Although he exhibited widely during his lifetime, and found buyers for some of his watercolors and etchings, it was not until the retrospective exhibition held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1926 that the general public were able to enter the uniquely personal world of Palmer's early years at Shoreham. Since then, his influence on a generation of English painters including Nash, Sutherland, John Piper, and F.L. Griggs, the publications of Geoffrey Grigson, Raymond Lister and others, have made him one of the most popular of English artists. The collection of paintings, drawings, watercolors, and etchings by Samuel Palmer in the Ashmolean Museum is the most important in the world. It is especially rich in the early works of the Shoreham period, from c. 1824 to 1835, notably the haunting self portrait and the unique group of six sepia drawings of 1825, which represent the 'visionary landscape' at its most intense.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 191080746X
• ISBN13: 9781910807460
• Release Date: April 2021
• Publisher: Ashmolean Museum
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 7.5" x 10.3"

Customer Reviews

A young man shall draw visions

This facsimile of Samuel Palmer's only surviving sketchbook (all others were sadly destroyed by his son after the artist's death) is a thing of beauty indeed. Palmer was all of 19 when he filled its pages with rough sketches, fine drawings, and the occasional poem. Any aspiring artist will recognize the struggle to hone & focus an obvious talent still in need of development. But even the non-artist will enjoy lingering over each page, watching as Palmer imitates his influences & begins to discover his own style. First among those influences, of course, is his mentor, William Blake. Close relations of the great artist's sinuous, larger-than-life figures emerge on several pages here. But Palmer's own pastoral but mystic tone is already taking shape: more modest in scale, with a luminous & unearthly stillness quite unlike Blake's ferocious & immense figures astride the cosmos. There's also a close attention to & clear love for the details of Nature, also foreign to Blake except as potent symbol. These pages are the first budding leaves of Palmer's visionary art. There was much ahead for this gifted young man, both a fully-developed artistic talent & personal disappointment; but this is where it all starts. A reminder to make the most of your gifts, and to pursue your own vision -- highly recommended!