SAMUEL PALMER (1805 - 1881)

The Bellman from Il Penseroso

1881

watercolour and bodycolour with gum arabic and pencil on paper; image size 17.2 × 23.9 cm;

sheet size 22.5 × 31.7 cm

inscribed: S.PALMER

P.436

Lister dates this ‘before 1881’ and attempts to transcribe a long and often illegible inscription (see notes). This leads him to conclude that this is probably a study for the large watercolour of 1881 now at Chatsworth (Lister M.20) and also for the etching (Lister E11).

When M.20 was exhibited at the R.A. in 1893 the frame bore a label on the back citing 11.83-4 from ‘Il Penseroso’ by Milton,

                   'And the bellman’s drowsy charm

                    To bless the doors from Nightly harm;'

This work bears strong similarities to Palmer's Shoreham Period (1828-35), a fact indicated by Palmer who, writing to P.G. Hamerton about the etching of the same subject, said: 'It is a breaking out of village-fever long after contact – a dream of that genuine village where I mused away some of my best years.'

EJ/JM

PROVENANCE: J. Douglas Fletcher; Miss Augusta Smith; Sir Alexander Napier; Eardley Knollys, his sale Sotheby’s 14 November 1962, lot 54 purchased by Thos. Agnew and Sons Ltd on behalf of Gallery, November 1962.

EXHIBITIONS: Royal Society Painters in Watercolours, London, 1882, no.61; Old Masters, London, R.A., 1893, no.125; Works of Samuel Palmer, New York, Durlacher Bros, 1949, no.42; Works by Samuel Palmer, Sheffield, Graves Art Gallery, 1961, no.68; Watercolours from Bedford, Norwich, Castle Museum, 1965, no.41; English Watercolours from The Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Reading, Reading Art Gallery, 1965, no.37; The English Tradition: An exhibition of watercolours from two private collections, Bedford, Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, 1972, no.62; Illustrations to Virgil & Milton, London, V& A, 1978-79, no.XXI(c);  Viktorianische Malerei von Turner bis Whistler, Munich, Neue Pinakothek, 1993 and Madrid, Prado, no.18.

REFERENCES: A.H. Palmer, The life and letters of Samuel Palmer, 1892, p.166; ed. R. Lister, The Letters of Samuel Palmer, 1974, p.691; Vision Recaptured: The Complete Etchings and the Paintings for Milton and for Virgil, 1978, pp.70-2, pl.18; R.Lister, Samuel Palmer: His Life and Art, 1987, pp.186, 215-24; R. Lister, Catalogue Raisonné of the works of Samuel Palmer, 1988, pp.223–4, no.M19. 

Copyright © Trustees of Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford.

Extract taken from Watercolours and Drawings, Cecil Higgins Art Gallery by Evelyn Joll.

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