As part of ongoing research into the life of the artist Samuel Palmer, Dr David Mullin recently contacted Bradford District Museums and Galleries (BDMG) about a painting in their collection. It turns out that in the collection are, in fact, two Palmer paintings, one of which has connections with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Great Bradford Exhibition of 1904. Dr Mullin has kindly shared his fascinating research in this blog.

Who was Samuel Palmer?

Samuel Palmer was born in London in January 1805. He was a precocious talent and exhibited paintings at the Royal Academy at the age of 14. When he was 19, his painting tutor, John Linnell, introduced him to William Blake, who became a huge influence and inspiration. Palmer fell under Blake’s spell and established a group of artists who called themselves the Ancients. Other artists in the group included George Richmond and Edward Calvert, with whom Palmer remained life-long friends.

In the mid-1820s, Palmer moved to the village of Shoreham in Kent. The Ancients and Blake visited him and they went on sketching trips across the rolling Kent countryside. It was during this period that Palmer produced his most well-known work, mostly painted at twilight and featuring moons, rustic peasants and fields full of ripe corn. This time in Shoreham has been described as the “Visionary Years” and the paintings are intense, dense and laden with meaning.

By the age of 30, Palmer had moved back to London and was trying to make a living as an artist. He married his painting tutor’s daughter and they honeymooned in Italy for two years, copying Renaissance masters and painting the landscape. Returning to London, Palmer taught art, but struggled to sell his own work. There were, however, small signs of recognition: he was elected a member of the Old Water-Colour Society in 1854 and illustrated Pictures from Italy for Charles Dickens, but his work (especially the skies) was generally considered too bright and overpowering for tastes of the day.

In 1861 the Palmer family moved to Surrey: their oldest son was ill and it was thought that the country air may act as a balm. It didn’t and the 19-year-old subsequently died. Palmer was devastated and never fully recovered from his grief. The family moved to a small villa close to his wife’s parents, who had just built a large mansion in Redhill, Surrey. The grief of his loss and the general antipathy towards his paintings meant that Palmer struggled financially: he couldn’t afford to have a newspaper delivered to his house and his father-in-law helped with the bills from time to time.

In his later life, Palmer discovered etching and worked on illustrations for two books: his own translation of the Eclogues of Virgil and a volume of shorter poems by John Milton. Neither of these were published in his lifetime, but he was described by P.G Hamerton in 1868 as being one of the few “really great English etchers”. Surrounded by his etching plates, painting portfolio and beloved books, Palmer died at home in May 1881.

After his death, Palmer remained relatively obscure. A retrospective exhibition was held at the end of 1881, but the majority of his surviving work was taken to Canada when his surviving son emigrated in 1909. Nevertheless, there was renewed interest in Palmer in the 1920s, when etching became fashionable and profitable. A group of students at Goldsmiths College of Art rediscovered Palmer’s work and this led to a major exhibition in London in 1926. This was a success and reignited interest in this obscure Englishman. Art students who fell under the influence of Palmer included Graham Sutherland, Paul Drury, Robin Tanner, Joseph Webb, Eric Ravilious, John Minton and John Craxton, a group which came to be known as the Neo-Romantics.

Since the 1926 exhibition, Palmer has been accepted into the canon of English landscape painters. All of the major museums and galleries hold collections of his work, and there have been regular exhibitions of his paintings and etchings. A significant retrospective was mounted jointly by the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2005 and an exhibition featuring Palmer and the Ancients ran in parallel to the huge William Blake exhibition at Tate Britain over 2019-20. A definitive biography was published by Raymond Lister in 1987 and Lister also produced a Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of Samuel Palmer in 1988. This Catalogue lists all of Palmer’s surviving paintings (over 700 in total), as well as his etchings and book illustrations. These include No.594 Sunset Through Trees of c.1862, held in BDMG’s collection.

Samuel Palmer’s work in Cartwright Hall

Sunset Through Trees (museum/accession number 1929-022) is a small watercolour and was presented to Cartwright Hall Art Gallery by Asa Lingard in 1929. It is described by Raymond Lister as “A not altogether successful study…” and may have been a sketch for other, larger, works. In BDMG’s history files, there is correspondence between the curator of the time and Raymond Lister about including an image of the painting in the Catalogue Raisonné in which a small black and white reproduction appears.

BDMG also holds another Samuel Palmer painting, which seems to have been overlooked at the time the Catalogue was being compiled. The picture, simply described as “Landscape” (museum/accession number 1920-011) was purchased from Ernest Brown and Phillips, Leicester Galleries, Leicester Square, London on 9th January 1920. It comprises a small study in black ink and wash of a tree under which cattle and sheep shelter. The reverse of the painting is inscribed “By Samuel Palmer, given me by his son 1889. F.G Stephens”.

1920-011. ‘Landscape’ by Samuel Palmer. Sepia ink and wash drawing. In Bradford District Museums and Galleries’ collection.

Photo by Dave Mullin. 1920-011. Reverse of ‘Landscape’ by Samuel Palmer. In Bradford District Museums and Galleries’ collection.

F.G Stephens was a non-artistic member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and was the Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. Between 1860 and 1901 he was the chief art critic of the Athenaeum and friends with Palmer. He also co-wrote the catalogue to Palmer’s posthumous exhibition of 1881 with Palmer’s son. It has not been possible to ascertain how the Leicester Square gallery obtained the painting, but Stephens died in 1907 and it is likely that his personal collection of paintings was dispersed after his death.

It is not clear why the painting was not included in Palmer’s Catalogue Raisonné as it was purchased before Sunset Through Trees and was in BDMG’s collection. In order to find out more about this previously unknown painting, Colin Harrison, Senior Curator of European Art in the Department of Western Art in the Ashmolean Museum, was consulted. The Ashmolean holds a large collection of Palmer’s work and Harrison is a leading authority on it. He suggested that the painting is the kind of subject that Palmer treated frequently in the 1860s. If this is correct, it makes the painting roughly contemporary with Sunset Through Trees. Both paintings were made during the period after Palmer’s son’s death, when he was living in Redhill and producing landscape paintings with bright skies which didn’t sell.

Landscape was one of a batch of twelve paintings purchased by Cartwright Hall Art Gallery from the Leicester Galleries in January 1920. Other artists included in the acquisition were more well-known landscape painters such as Peter deWint and Richard Wilson, as well as Palmer’s painting tutor John Linnell and his painting tutor John Varley. The acquisition seems to have been one of the outcomes of The Great Bradford Exhibition of 1904. This exhibition, based on the model of The Great Exhibition of 1851, included a variety of attractions such as an Industrial Hall, a Somali Village, a water chute and a crystal maze. It took place in Lister Park and was visited by nearly two and a half million people. As part of the Exhibition, a large selection of English paintings was loaned from other galleries and individuals and displayed in the newly completed Cartwright Memorial Hall, as it was known at the time. These included work by the “great” painters such as Hogarth, Turner, Reynolds, Gainsborough and Constable and other work on display included The Gravel Pit by John Linnell, some of Edward Calvert’s woodcuts and much work by William Blake. Two paintings by Samuel Palmer were also exhibited: The Days Work Done and Two Pet Lambs, as well as a total of eight of his etchings.

The painting purchase in 1920 seems to have been part of the ongoing assembly of a permanent art collection at Cartwright Memorial Hall, a direct result of the Great Bradford Exhibition and the start of the gallery as we know it today. At the time, Palmer was relatively unknown and overshadowed by Blake and Linnell: it is a credit to the foresight of the Director of Libraries, Art Gallery and Museums (which included Cartwright Memorial Hall), Butler Wood, that Palmer’s work was included in the acquisition. Palmer continues to be influential and his paintings are held in all of the major art collections across the world. The work held by BDMG helps us to understand the later, relatively neglected, part of Palmer’s career.

– by Dr David Mullin (email: davemullin@hotmail.com    instagram: @davidmullinhere) 

Lizzie Llabres, Collections Manager, says “Dr Mullin has been generous in sharing his knowledge and research of Palmer and this painting with us. It’s fantastic when researchers work with us to shine a spotlight on an object in our collection, helping us and the public understand that object, its provenance and context even more”.

Dr Lauren Padgett, one of our Assistant Curator of Collections who facilitated Dr Mullin’s research visit, added “We are really pleased that Dr Mullin contacted us with his initial enquiry about Palmer’s artwork. This led to us reacquainting ourselves with Palmer’s Landscape which has been in storage and is unknown to Palmer scholars… until now”.

1926-002. ‘Butler Wood’ by Howard Somerville. Oil on canvas. In Bradford District Museums and Galleries’ collection.

Sources

City of Bradford Exhibition 1904. Catalogue of the Works of Art in the Cartwright Memorial Hall. Armitage and Ibbotson Ltd.

P.G Hamerton 1868. Etching and Etchers. Macmillan & Co.

R. Lister 1988. Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of Samuel Palmer. Cambridge University Press.

R. Lister 1987. Samuel Palmer: Life and Art. Cambridge University Press.

A.H Palmer with F.G Stephens 1881. Life of Samuel Palmer. Fine Art Society.

M. Yorke 1988. The Spirit of Place: Nine Neo-Romantic Artists and Their Times. Constable.