Lot Essay
An illustration to lines 25-8 of John Milton's Lycidas:-
'Together both, ere the high lawns appear'd
Under the opening eye-lids of the morn,
We drove afield, and both together heard
What time the grey-fly winds her sultry horn.'
Under the influence of his nurse Mary Ward the artist had been interested in Milton from his childhood, and in 1837, on her death-bed, she gave him her copy of Jacob Tonson's edition of the poet's works. In 1855 and 1856 Palmer exhibited three watercolours illustrating Milton's Comus at the Old Water Color Society, and in 1864, stimulated by the interest in his work shown by Leonard Rowe Valpy, Ruskin's solicitor, he turned his attention to L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. Valpy commissioned eight large watercolours, and Palmer intended to make etchings of them but only completed two by the time of his death. The Lycidas watercolour, somewhat smaller in size, seems to have been a by-product of the series; a gouache seen as a study for this work has been dated circa 1864 (A Vision Recaptured, 1978, p.65 no.XVI (b)). The Lycidas watercolour was included in the posthumous publication of Palmer's illustrations to Milton's Shorter Poems (described as 'The Minor Poems' on the cover) in 1889.
Palmer's thoughts at the time of his later illustrations to Milton are described in a letter to Valpy of June 1864: 'I carried the Minor Poems in my pocket for twenty years, and once went into the country expressly for retirement, while attempting a set of designs for L'Allegro and Il Penseroso... I have often dreamed of a small-sized set of subjects... half from the one and half from the other poem. For I never artistically know "such a sacred and homefelt delight" as when endeavouring in all humility, to realize after a sort the imagery of Milton' (A.H. Palmer, The Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer, Painter and Etcher, 1892, p.255). In the event the late illustrations to Milton were among the largest works Palmer ever executed. Lister commented 'Seldom has a painter loved and understood a poet as Palmer loved and understood Milton' (Lister, op. cit., p.8).
'Together both, ere the high lawns appear'd
Under the opening eye-lids of the morn,
We drove afield, and both together heard
What time the grey-fly winds her sultry horn.'
Under the influence of his nurse Mary Ward the artist had been interested in Milton from his childhood, and in 1837, on her death-bed, she gave him her copy of Jacob Tonson's edition of the poet's works. In 1855 and 1856 Palmer exhibited three watercolours illustrating Milton's Comus at the Old Water Color Society, and in 1864, stimulated by the interest in his work shown by Leonard Rowe Valpy, Ruskin's solicitor, he turned his attention to L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. Valpy commissioned eight large watercolours, and Palmer intended to make etchings of them but only completed two by the time of his death. The Lycidas watercolour, somewhat smaller in size, seems to have been a by-product of the series; a gouache seen as a study for this work has been dated circa 1864 (A Vision Recaptured, 1978, p.65 no.XVI (b)). The Lycidas watercolour was included in the posthumous publication of Palmer's illustrations to Milton's Shorter Poems (described as 'The Minor Poems' on the cover) in 1889.
Palmer's thoughts at the time of his later illustrations to Milton are described in a letter to Valpy of June 1864: 'I carried the Minor Poems in my pocket for twenty years, and once went into the country expressly for retirement, while attempting a set of designs for L'Allegro and Il Penseroso... I have often dreamed of a small-sized set of subjects... half from the one and half from the other poem. For I never artistically know "such a sacred and homefelt delight" as when endeavouring in all humility, to realize after a sort the imagery of Milton' (A.H. Palmer, The Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer, Painter and Etcher, 1892, p.255). In the event the late illustrations to Milton were among the largest works Palmer ever executed. Lister commented 'Seldom has a painter loved and understood a poet as Palmer loved and understood Milton' (Lister, op. cit., p.8).