One artist whose work I have admired for quite a while but never really knew how to contextualize in a topical or thematic way is Samuel Palmer (1805-1881). He seems to be one of those people who was not of his time. I guess you would call him a Victorian artist, but he reacted against his dynamic age by creating rather romanticized, even primitivized (if that is a word) landscapes and pastoral scenes, in several mediums. I find much of his work–particularly his early work– very appealing yet hard to pin down: some of his paintings look and feel as if they could date from either the early seventeenth century or the late nineteenth. The monochromatic drawings which he called “blacks” (the first two images below) look strikingly modern to me, and deliberately designed to illustrate the effects of moonlight. I was looking and thinking about the Harvest Moon over the past few nights and suddenly one of these popped into my mind. So I looked up his works at the Tate, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a few other places, and found that my memory was correct: this was a man who could really draw (down) the full moon–and its crescent counterparts as well. The then-nineteen-year-old’s biblical inscription on the last drawing below is both timeless and timely: The / moon / also to / rule by night / for his mercy / endureth / for ever. Thou / crownest / the year / with thy / goodness.
Samuel Palmer, The Harvest Moon: Drawing for ‘A Pastoral Scene’ c.1831. Tate Britain
Samuel Palmer, Nocturnal Landscape with Full Moon and Deer, c. 1829-30. Victoria & Albert Museum
Samuel Palmer, Coming from Evening Church, 1830. Tate Britain
Samuel Palmer, A Cornfield by Moonlight with the Evening Star,1830. British Museum
Samuel Palmer, Harvest Moon, 1833. Yale Center for British Art
Samuel Palmer,Christmas, or Folding the Last Sheep, 1850( Etching; second state of five). Metropolitan Museum of Art
Samuel Palmer, Harvest Celebration, c. 1824 (Leaf 20, ink drawing from a sketchbook). Victoria & Albert Museum
September 17th, 2016 at 3:51 am
He was a great artist and lived and worked at Shoreham in Kent (not Shoreham Sussex as people think) , near where I used to live.
September 17th, 2016 at 6:43 am
Hi Donna,
What an interesting piece. Never heard of Samuel Palmer (1826-1881), so I had to check him out. Rather a sad life. The influence of the poet Blake is obvious on his work.
Really liked –
“Coming from Evening Church”
“”Christmas, or Folding the Last Sheep”
Thanks…
September 19th, 2016 at 8:07 am
Reblogged this on Lenora's Culture Center and Foray into History.