SAMUEL PALMER R.W.S. (1805 – 1881)
“The Homeward Star”
Original Etching
Ref. Lister Plate 14. State ii/14
Plate size 5 ¼” x 7 3/8” (135mm x 192mm)
Image size 3 15/16” x 5 15/16” (101mm x 152mm)
Overall framed size 12 7/8” x 14 7/8” (327mm x
379mm)
Framed in an antique decorative gold leaf frame
fitted with ultra violet filtering low reflect glass IMAGE IMAGE
“The Willow” 1850.
Original Etching signed in the plate. Plate
I/ii.
The present etching comes from the large paper
impression as first issued in
the special Limited Edition of “The Life and
Letters of Samuel Palmer”
by A.H. Palmer 1892. This edition was limited to 130 copies
Plate size 4 5/8” x 3 3/16”.
Etched surface 3 17/32” x 2 5/8”.
Signed and dated 1850 in the plate.
In a period frame finished in gold leaf over oak
and fitted with ultra violet filtering glass.
Overall framed size 14 ½” x 11 ¼”. IMAGE IMAGE
“Moeris and Galatea”
Original Etching
Lister Plate 17. State ii/iv. Published
1884 for “An English Version of the Eclogues of Virgil” by Samuel Palmer.
Palmer worked on the Eclogues for some 16
years. Moeris and Galatea is one of four etchings left by Palmer in an
advanced stage of completion when he died in 1881.
The Artist’s son, A.H. Palmer, promised his father
that he would complete the project and added the final details to the four
plates according to his father’s instructions.
Plate size 5 3/16” x 7 3/8” (131mm x 187mm)
Etched surface 3 15/16” x 5 15/16” 100mm x 151mm)
Overall framed size 12 ¾” x 14 3/8” (322mm x 366mm)
Framed fitted with ultra-violet filtering low
reflect glass IMAGE IMAGE
“The Vine or Plumpy Baccus”
1851 – 1852
Original Etchings - Two images on one sheet.L5iv/iv
The rarest of Palmer’s plates. Published by
The Etching Club 1853. Edition of 225
“The Vine” illustrates the song in Act II Scene V11
of “Antony and Cleopatra”
Come thou monarch of the vine
Plumpy Baccus with pink eyne:
In thy vats our cares be drown’d;
With thy grapes our hairs be crown’d;
Cup us till the world go round
Cup us till the world go round
Large paper edition with writing in terracotta
Upper subject 3 1/2” x 5” (89mm x 128mm). Lower
image 2 ¾” x 5” (70mm x 128mm)
Plate size 11 7/8” x 8 ½” (298mm x
216mm). Sheet size 17 ½” x 11 ¾” (445mm x 295mm)
Overall framed size 20” x 16 ¼” (510mm x 413mm)
Framed using ultra-violet filtering low reflect
glass
Examples of this etching can be found in the
collections of The Victoria and Albert Museum; The New York Metropolitan Museum
of Art;
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; The Paul Mellon
Collection; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Philadelphia
(Full sheet but with part of the lower left hand
corner missing and small tears at the top of the sheet all well outside the
plate)
Photo of the unframed sheet available on request IMAGE 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.
