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Lot Essay
Palmer is probably the most original landscape painter of the 19th century. Works executed during his 'visionary years' in the Shoreham Valley after he came under the influence of Blake and before his Italian honeymoon (1838-39) are particularly highly regarded. This magnificent drawing of the ancient gnarled oak tree and the blossoming beech is considered by Raymond Lister to be 'the best' of the group of drawings commissioned by Palmers's friend Linnell.
In 1828 Palmer wrote to George Richmond, then in Italy, that 'Mr. Linnell tells me that by making studies of the Shoreham scenery I could make a thousand a year directly'. However, despite the efforts of John Linnell, later to become Palmer's father-in-law, to curb his visionary excesses, inspired by Blake, and turn Palmer away form his previous reliance on engravings by earlier artists, Palmer continued 'Though I am making studies for Mr. Linnell, I will, God help me, never be a naturalist by profession' (A.H. Palmer, The Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer, London 1892 (reissued 1972), p. 46).
Later Palmer described such a scene as in the present drawing in a letter to Linnell of 21 December 1828:
'Universal nature wears a lovely gentleness of mild attraction;
but the leafy lightness, the thousand repetitions of little
forms, which are a part of its own generic perfection; and who
would wish them but what they are? - seem hard to be reconciled
with the unwinning severity, the awefulness, the ponderous
globosity of Art. Milton, by one epithet, draws an oak of the
largest girth I ever saw "Pine and monumental oak.": I have
just been trying to draw a large one in Lullingstone; but the
poet's tree is huger than any in the park: there, the moss and
rifts, and barky furrows, and the mouldering gray tho' that
adds majesty to the lord of forests; mostly catch the eye,
before the group and grapple of the roots, the muscular belly
and shoulders; the twisted sinews'.
Palmer thus managed to combine 'naturalism' with the visual inspiration of John Milton, subtly retaining the visionary element.
Palmer's 'thousand repetitions of little forms' mentioned above, are what make up this powerful drawing. The complexity of the marks he makes to delineate each 'little form', relays the texture of nature that so fascinated him. The soft moss boldly painted in green washes, the controlled scribbling in pencil for the branches and the shadows, and the mottled dappling in ink to create the rich patterns of the bark build up the layers of this muscular drawing. Palmer uses globules of bodycolour in white, yellow and orange to produce the visionary glow in the far distance, creating a horizon and anchoring the compostion. As in many of Palmers drawings of the time he, concentrates his attention on a small portion of the compostion and wildly suggests forms in the other areas of the sheet in a frantic shorthand.
Grigson writes (1947, p. 89), 'There are some seventeen drawings which belong to this time of 1828 and 1829, to Palmer's analysing of nature. Five of these were among the studies done for Linnell, and until lately belonged to one of Linnell's grandsons. There is a peculiar intensity about these drawings. Whereas in the series of 1825 [the sepia drawings in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Grigson, op.cit, pls. 11-16], nature was jacketed into a precision and stiffness of form, fitted into a Van Leydenish or Dürer-like quality of landscape, with however strong and glowing an apprehension, here in these drawings it is nature and Palmer, a presence of Palmer into a tree, into the dark velvetiness of a shadowed hill, into the fury of a tangle of branches, into all the eyes and buds of nature. Produced by a mind partly fed and fattened by literature, they belong in no sense to a literary anecdotal art.'
Of all his work, the present drawing has to be one of the most important precursors of 20th-century romantic painting. As Lister points out: '... Palmer's preoccupation with the textures of nature, especially in the trunk of the oak, [which] seem to look forward to the work of Graham Sutherland in the present century' (see Tree Form, Temple Newsam House, Leeds). Not only the ideas behind the painting reflect a very modern vision but also the technique anticipates much of the 'mark-making' used by Sutherland and Piper in their works on paper (see lots 86, 89, 103 and 114).
It is very rare that drawings from the Shoreham period appear on the market as these drawings are highly prized and the majority are already in national collecitons. Of the five drawings commissioned by Linnell and bequeathed to his grandson Herbert, this is the only drawing to have remained in private hands. The other four drawings are in the Yale Center for British Art, the National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa and in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
In 1828 Palmer wrote to George Richmond, then in Italy, that 'Mr. Linnell tells me that by making studies of the Shoreham scenery I could make a thousand a year directly'. However, despite the efforts of John Linnell, later to become Palmer's father-in-law, to curb his visionary excesses, inspired by Blake, and turn Palmer away form his previous reliance on engravings by earlier artists, Palmer continued 'Though I am making studies for Mr. Linnell, I will, God help me, never be a naturalist by profession' (A.H. Palmer, The Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer, London 1892 (reissued 1972), p. 46).
Later Palmer described such a scene as in the present drawing in a letter to Linnell of 21 December 1828:
'Universal nature wears a lovely gentleness of mild attraction;
but the leafy lightness, the thousand repetitions of little
forms, which are a part of its own generic perfection; and who
would wish them but what they are? - seem hard to be reconciled
with the unwinning severity, the awefulness, the ponderous
globosity of Art. Milton, by one epithet, draws an oak of the
largest girth I ever saw "Pine and monumental oak.": I have
just been trying to draw a large one in Lullingstone; but the
poet's tree is huger than any in the park: there, the moss and
rifts, and barky furrows, and the mouldering gray tho' that
adds majesty to the lord of forests; mostly catch the eye,
before the group and grapple of the roots, the muscular belly
and shoulders; the twisted sinews'.
Palmer thus managed to combine 'naturalism' with the visual inspiration of John Milton, subtly retaining the visionary element.
Palmer's 'thousand repetitions of little forms' mentioned above, are what make up this powerful drawing. The complexity of the marks he makes to delineate each 'little form', relays the texture of nature that so fascinated him. The soft moss boldly painted in green washes, the controlled scribbling in pencil for the branches and the shadows, and the mottled dappling in ink to create the rich patterns of the bark build up the layers of this muscular drawing. Palmer uses globules of bodycolour in white, yellow and orange to produce the visionary glow in the far distance, creating a horizon and anchoring the compostion. As in many of Palmers drawings of the time he, concentrates his attention on a small portion of the compostion and wildly suggests forms in the other areas of the sheet in a frantic shorthand.
Grigson writes (1947, p. 89), 'There are some seventeen drawings which belong to this time of 1828 and 1829, to Palmer's analysing of nature. Five of these were among the studies done for Linnell, and until lately belonged to one of Linnell's grandsons. There is a peculiar intensity about these drawings. Whereas in the series of 1825 [the sepia drawings in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Grigson, op.cit, pls. 11-16], nature was jacketed into a precision and stiffness of form, fitted into a Van Leydenish or Dürer-like quality of landscape, with however strong and glowing an apprehension, here in these drawings it is nature and Palmer, a presence of Palmer into a tree, into the dark velvetiness of a shadowed hill, into the fury of a tangle of branches, into all the eyes and buds of nature. Produced by a mind partly fed and fattened by literature, they belong in no sense to a literary anecdotal art.'
Of all his work, the present drawing has to be one of the most important precursors of 20th-century romantic painting. As Lister points out: '... Palmer's preoccupation with the textures of nature, especially in the trunk of the oak, [which] seem to look forward to the work of Graham Sutherland in the present century' (see Tree Form, Temple Newsam House, Leeds). Not only the ideas behind the painting reflect a very modern vision but also the technique anticipates much of the 'mark-making' used by Sutherland and Piper in their works on paper (see lots 86, 89, 103 and 114).
It is very rare that drawings from the Shoreham period appear on the market as these drawings are highly prized and the majority are already in national collecitons. Of the five drawings commissioned by Linnell and bequeathed to his grandson Herbert, this is the only drawing to have remained in private hands. The other four drawings are in the Yale Center for British Art, the National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa and in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.