| Samuel Palmer: Vision and Landscape | |
| A Special Exhibition Review by Anne-Marie Jacobus |
Samuel Palmer (British, 1805-1881)
Self Portrait, ca. 1824
Black and white chalks on buff paper
29.1 x 22.9 cm.
© The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
About the show:
Extraordinarily, the last complete Samuel Palmer exhibition was held in 1926 at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. This fact leaves one to wonder how one of the greatest English landscape painters and etchers of the Victorian era had been neglected and virtually forgotten for so long. Palmer's skill as a landscape painter was incredibly visionary and original compared to many of his peers. At long last, a major retrospective marking the two-hundredth anniversary of the artist's birth is currently on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, March 7 - May 29, 2006 (and more recently at the British Museum). Palmer is finally given the recognition he deserves in this exhibition that concentrates on a full survey of his career.
The three-room display includes celebrated works of art by Palmer and related works by his mentors, William Blake and John Linnell, and friends Edward Calvert and George Richmond. The organisers were able to obtain over 100 examples of Palmer's most important and influential works in various mediums. Unfortunately, several works by Palmer that were on display at the British Museum exhibition were unable to make their way across the Atlantic to the show at the Met. However, six additional works by Palmer, such as Harvesters by Fire Light, are only being shown in the New York venue.
The exhibition is displayed throughout the museum's Drawings, Prints, and Photographs Galleries, 2nd floor. The show is grouped chronologically, beginning with Palmer's Early Years, 1812-1823. By the age of fourteen, he had become an accomplished painter who was already exhibiting works at the Royal Academy and the British Institute. Under the influence of William Blake and John Linnell, Palmer abandoned conventional landscape painting and began to develop his own unique 'primitive style' of intense landscapes.
Samuel Palmer (British, 1805-1881)
Rest on the Flight to Egypt, 1824-5
Oil on panel
32.3 X 39.4 cm.
© The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
It is in the second section, entitled The Primitive Years, where Palmer's working style evolved to strong decorative patterns, vivid colour and defined outlines - an intense and visionary stylization for which he is recognised. Palmer's distinctive style can be seen in two of his most recognised works: Rest on the Flight to Egypt (1824-5) and The Magic Apple Tree (1830). In the first painting, the Shoreham countryside becomes a vision of earthly paradise where Palmer is able to merge his spiritual ideology into the visual landscape of the Kent countryside. One of Palmer's key techniques was to distort the images of people in his paintings, like the Holy Family in Rest on the Flight to Egypt, to force the viewer's attention to the surrounding landscape. Note also the steeply sloping area in the left foreground, another compositional device frequently used by Palmer.
Samuel Palmer (British, 1805-1881)
The Magic Apple Tree, 1830
Brown ink, watercolor and gouache with gum arabic
34.9 x 26 cm.
© The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Both Rest on the Flight to Egypt and The Magic Apple Tree were painted during Palmer's Shoreham years, a period that is now recognised as the apex of his career and creativity. These paintings mark the third and fourth sections in the exhibition, Shoreham and The Ancients, 1826-1830, highlighting the most important periods in Palmer's life. He produced some of the best work of his artistic career at this time, and would later look back on and describe it as "...the happiest and most creative period of my life."
In 1826, Palmer moved to the countryside and settled in Shoreham, Kent. Palmer was so taken with the area that he nicknamed it the "Valley of Vision." Here in Kent his work became its most individualistic, creative and original. Many of his artistic friends settled around him in Shoreham, and soon the group began calling themselves The Ancients. But, as the exhibition reveals, the bucolic dream did not last. Palmer was unable to sustain his creativity and soon the realities of the outside world began to shatter the rural idyll that he created on his canvases.
Like the idealised paintings of English landscapes captured more than fifty years earlier by Richard Wilson, many of Palmer's landscapes from his years at Shoreham also reflect the English countryside as benign and innocent, far removed from the hardships and poverty that were the realities of rural living. Palmer's later years in Shoreham coincided with social and political unrest in the countryside as poor farm labourers protested against depressed living and working conditions. By 1835, now disillusioned with life in the country, Palmer left Shoreham permanently and returned to London.
The fifth and sixth sections of the exhibition are devoted to the work Palmer created during travels around Devon and Wales and in Italy with his wife, Hannah. Palmer's landscapes of the English countryside from this period lack the intensity and energy of The Shoreham years. Although the landscapes seem more clear and exact, the ethereal qualities created in his Shoreham work are no longer evident. One new feature in his work during this period, however, is the sudden use of light as applied to seascapes.
The sixth section looks at the most turbulent period in Palmer's life, both personally and professionally. Palmer was elected an associate to the Old Watercolour Society in 1843, where he exhibited his work regularly. During this period, he began to experiment with etching and quickly became "one of the most individual, and respected etchers of the period." Sadly, during this period Palmer also experienced the loss of two children. The impact of his son's death, which he described as the "greatest tragedy of my life," had a profound effect on the rest of Palmer's life.
The final section of the exhibition is devoted to the last years of Palmer's life and career. In an attempt to move away from the painful memories of the loss of his son, Palmer moved his family to Redhill, Surrey were he lived as a virtual recluse. However, in the last two decades of his life Palmer was commissioned by the solicitor, Leonard Rowe Valpy, to paint a cycle of work on any theme he chose.
Samuel Palmer (British, 1805-1881)
The Lonely Tower, 1880
Watercolor and gouache
6 5/8 x 9 1/4 in. (16.8 x 23.5 cm.)
© The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens
Gilbert Davis Collection.
Accepting Valpy's offer, Palmer selected as his theme two poems by the seventeenth-century poet John Milton: L'Allegro (The Cheerful Man) and Il Penserose (The Contemplative Man). Palmer created eight watercolours before his death in 1881. It could be argued that Palmer's later work recaptured some of the energy of his early years at Shoreham, but his works from this period also seem to reflect sadness from his personal life, as his paintings seem subdued compared to earlier work.
Sadly, critical acclaim seemed to escape Palmer for most of his professional life and even after his death recognition could not be maintained for long. Despite artists and poets such as W.B. Yeats and Lucien Freud claiming Palmer's work as a source of inspiration, he has, unfortunately, been assigned to a cycle of neglect and rediscovery with each generation. Let's hope that this exhibition sees an end to this cycle and ushers in a more permanent appreciation for one of England's greatest landscape painters.
About the catalogue:
Vaughn, William, Elizabeth E. Barker and Colin Harrison.
Samuel Palmer: Visions and Dreams 1805-1881 (exh. cat.).
London: British Museum Press, 2005.
For further reading:
Lister, Raymond. Catalogue Raisonne of the Works of Samuel Palmer.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Lister, Raymond. Samuel Palmer and the Ancients (exh. cat.).
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Harrison, Colin. Samuel Palmer.
Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 1997.
Goldman, Paul. Samuel Palmer - Visionary Printmaker (booklet).
London: The British Museum Press, 1991-2
"Samuel Palmer (1805-1881): Vision and Landscape" is on view from March 7 through May 29, 2006 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82 Street, New York, NY 10028-0198 (Telephone: 212-535-7710; Website: www.metmuseum.org). The museum is open Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday from 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM and Friday and Saturday from 9:30 AM to 9:00 PM. SUGGESTED admission is $15.00 for adults. Paid parking is available in The Museum Garage.
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From your Guide: Anne-Marie Jacobus, Correspondent for Museums and Exhibitions, London, is a specialist in the history of nineteenth-century art collecting as well as Art History and its relationship to gender in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Her interests include European decorative arts and Oriental porcelain.