A page from Samuel Palmer's 1824 sketchbook. Palmer studies the way that light streams through shadowing foliage. He frames a single figure within a painted Gothic frame. Accompanying notes record precise visual details from the âvery brilliant horizon' to the textures and tones of the monk's bald head: ârather red', âglobular', âpolished & smooth'.
Early Morning
(1825). Palmer captures the quiet harmony of dawn in this delicate sepia. Doves call from the boughs of the crinkle-leaved oaks. A hare picks its solitary way up the shadow-streaked path.
William Blake and John Varley
(1821) by John Linnell. The ebullient Varley is sketched in the middle of animated conversation; Blake is leaning back with an expression of benign detachment. Varley was probably trying to convince Blake of his astrological theories.
Portrait of an Artist
(1829). When Richmond titled this miniature likeness of Samuel Palmer it was an act of affirmation, of faith in the future career of his friend who in Shoreham would sometimes don archaic robes like these.
Oak Trees in Lullingstone Park
(1828). For Palmer, trees were far more than mere leafy adornments of a picturesque composition. They seemed like people: each with an individual personality and look. He saw in these oaks the noble descendents of the great Celtic giants which had once sheltered the valley of Shoreham, and he tried to evoke their monumental splendour as surely as Milton, in his poetry, does.
Coming from Evening Church
(1830). This image distils the essence of Palmer's convictions. The natural and spiritual merge as villagers process home from their ivy-clad chapel beneath trees which soar upwards like the Gothic arches of a church. The light of the moon falls, a benediction from above.
In a Shoreham Garden
(
c.
1830). The extraordinary pictures which Palmer kept secret in his âCuriosity Portfolio' are now considered among his finest paintings. They are works of splendour. Here nature runs riot in a profusion of pale apple blossom.
The Magic Apple Tree
(
c.
1830). Another of the works which were shown only to close friends, this painting glows as bright as an autumn bonfire. Palmer exults in the harvest's rich gifts. Colour becomes a pure sensual pleasure.
Yellow Twilight
(
c.
1830). âIn a half-lit room the drawing seems luminescent; both startling and tender,' wrote Palmer scholar Geoffrey Grigson, who counted it among the artist's very greatest works. âIn few things painted by an English artist is vision held so securely and with such simplicity and such delicate, grave concentration.'
The Harvest Moon
(1833). Villagers harvest together through the star-spangled night, gathering in the natural bounty of the land. Palmer used oil for this painting and submitted it (along with
Th e Gleaning Field
) to the Royal Academy. It remained unsold.
Cypresses at the Villa d'Este
(1838). Ruskin may well have been thinking of this study when he wrote that Palmer's âstudies of foreign foliage especially are beyond all praise for care and fullness'.
