The Goatherd

Details

Samuel Palmer, R.W.S. (1805-1881)
The Goatherd
pencil, black ink and watercolour heightened with bodycolour and with scratching out, lightly squared
7¾ x 10 7/8 in. (19.2 x 27.7 cm.)

Provenance

F.W. Bourdillon.
S.C. Reiss.
with Agnew's, London, 1958, where purchased by George Goyder.

Literature

C. Peacock, Samuel Palmer: Shoreham and After, London, 1960, pl. 6.
R. Lister, Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of Samuel Palmer, Cambridge, 1988, pp. 211-1, no. 684, illustrated.

Exhibited

London, Agnew's, Annual Exhibition of Watercolours, 1959, no. 26. Reigate, Town Hall, Samuel Palmer and John Linnell Exhibition, July - August 1963, no. 11.
Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, 1992-2004, on loan.

Special notice

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Lot Essay

Although squared, the subject seems not to have been engraved. Lister describes it as representing 'a stage towards the development of the Virgil designs ... which it closely resembles', singling out the second version of the illustrations to Eclogue X, Pan came, Arcadian Tetrach Ever Good (Lister, op. cit., p. 237, no. V23), which he dates to circa 1878, but the similarity is not that close and his dating of the present work to circa 1879 is probably too late. A label on the back is inscribed 'From the Collection of F.W. Bourdillon c 1836 [converted from 7]' and an inscription on another label (cut out of an Agnew's annual watercolour exhibition catalogue and numbered 26) reads '2nd Welsh tour', which took place in 1836, but this seems altogether too early. Palmer was in Wales again in 1843 and executed a watercolour of A Herd of Goats in 1844 (Lister, op.cit., pp. 143-4, no. 388, illustrated), but this still seems too early for the present watercolour, which in any case has no specific Welsh characteristics.

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