
Samuel Palmer (1805–1881) created some of the most intensely visionary landscapes in British art. Born in London to a bookseller, he was a delicate child who began exhibiting at the Royal Academy at fourteen. In 1824, John Linnell introduced him to William Blake, an encounter that transformed his art.
Blake's influence ignited Palmer's "Shoreham period" (1826–1835), when he lived in a run-down cottage nicknamed "Rat Abbey" in the Kent village. There he painted the surrounding countryside as a demi-paradise: harvest moons rising over ripe corn, shepherds watching flocks beneath ancient trees, churches nestled in valleys. These small paintings glow with religious intensity, often rendered in rich sepias and golds. He associated with the "Ancients," a group of Blake-influenced artists including George Richmond and Edward Calvert.
Palmer left Shoreham in 1834, married John Linnell's daughter in 1837, and spent two years honeymooning in Italy. The visionary intensity gradually faded from his work. He became a full member of the Water Colour Society in 1854 and took up etching in 1850, becoming one of Britain's most innovative printmakers. His late watercolors illustrating Milton show renewed power. The death of his elder son in 1861 devastated him. Palmer himself was virtually forgotten until the 1920s, when his Shoreham paintings influenced modern Romantic artists like Paul Nash and Graham Sutherland. Kenneth Clark called him "the English Van Gogh." His work is held at the Tate and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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