Samuel Palmer (1805-1881): Vision and Landscape

by Colin Harrison, Elizabeth E. Barker, William Vaughan

This book, which accompanied the first major retrospective of Samuel Palmer's work in nearly 80 years, unites 170 of Palmer's finest watercolours, drawings, etchings and oils from public and private collections in the UK, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and the United States. It highlights the artist's celebrated early work, executed in a visionary style inspired by William Blake, and re-examines Palmer's vibrant middle-period Italian studies and masterful late watercolours and etchings.

Winner of a Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award 2006

Genres: Art, Art History

256 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2005

About the author

Colin Harrison is a crime novelist. He is a vice president and senior editor at Scribner.
He lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with his wife, the writer Kathryn Harrison, and their three children (Sarah, Walker and Julia).

He attended: Haverford College, BA 1982; University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. MFA 1986

His short nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, Vogue, Salon, Worth, and other various publications.

Reviews

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first came across Samuel Palmer through my interest in Wm Blake. Palmer was one of a small group of young artists who hung out with and learned from Blake in his ornery and feisty and strange old age, around the time he did the weird drawings like Ghost of a Flea. It must've been fascinating to be there...

As far as I know Palmer is the best known of this small group of Blakean disciples, and around the relatively short time he was sitting at Blake's feet he created his best known woodcuts and paintings, like The Lonely Tower, most of which are dense little pastoral worlds of visionary landscapes where everything, even inanimate things, is charged with some kind of universal life force and interconnected and woven together like a living tapestry. They really look like visions of a new earth, where money has no significance and you could just reach out and grab a clod of earth and eat it for dinner. If you're susceptible to this kind of thing, then there's not much better than Samuel Palmer.

But of course he lost this intensity of vision after a few years, but he was still able to create some lovely pastoral landscapes, some of which are colored in such a heightened pitch that they look like proto-pre-Raphaelite paintings, and in fact I think he had an influence on those painters.

Late in life he had another resurgence of his visionary abilities, only less intense and maybe not as authentic, but still of significant interest.

This is the best overall book on Samuel Palmer that I've come across, and I kick myself for not actually making it to the show that this is a catalogue for, but oh well, sometimes it's nice to not satisfy every desire one has.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

A comprehensive collection of the work of one of the greatest British artists of all time. Astoundingly beautiful stuff.

[Andrea Engle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Splendid, scholarly exploration of the visionary artist Samuel Palmer ... spans his entire career, from aspiring follower of William Blake to accepted Victorian etcher of landscapes ... copiously illustrated with magnificent color plates ...

[Thomas Sheridan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a large collection of art books and this is among the best. I think it is somewhat overpriced - but if you love the English Romantic era you won't be sorry to have purchased this.