The Vintage: an illustration for Charles Dickens' 'Pictures from Italy'

Details

Samuel Palmer, R.W.S. (London 1805-1881 Surrey)
The Vintage: an illustration for Charles Dickens' 'Pictures from Italy'
signed 'S. PALMER' (lower right)
pencil, pen and brown ink, grey wash, heightened with white on tracing paper laid down on card
5 ¼ x 2 7/8 in. (13.5 x 7.5 cm.)

Provenance

Mrs. Caroline Scott, 1858.
Mrs. Dovell; Sotheby's, London, 18 December 1963, lot 174.
with Leger Galleries, London.
Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Lister.
with The Fine Art Society, London.
with Richard L. Feigen, New York.

Literature

C. Kitton, Dickens and his Illustrators, London, 1899, pp. 183.
W. Dexter (ed.), The Letters of Charles Dickens, 1938, I, p. 748.
R. Lister, Samuel Palmer and his Etchings, London, 1969, pp. 121- 124.
E.W.F. Tomkin (ed.), Charles Dickens 1812-1870, 1969, pp. 196, 219-21.
R. Lister (ed.), The Letters of Samuel Palmer, Oxford, 1974, pp. 439-40, 442.
K. Tillotson (ed.), Letters of Charles Dickens, 1977, IV, pp. 521, 541, 546-7.
R. Lister, 'The Book Illustrations of Samuel Palmer’, Book Collector, Spring 1979, p. 70, ill. p. 75.
J.R. Cohen, Charles Dickens and his Original Illustrators, Ohio, 1980, pp. 194-5.
R. Lister, Samuel Palmer in Palmer Country, East Bergholt, 1980, p. 40.
R. Lister, Samuel Palmer and 'The Ancients', exh. cat., Cambridge, 1984, pp. 65-7, no. 90.
R. Lister, The Paintings of Samuel Palmer, Cambridge, 1985, pp. 21, 22, pl. 53,
R. Lister, Samuel Palmer his life and art, Cambridge, 1987, pp. 146-8, ill. p. 147.
R. Lister, Catalogue Raisonné of the works of Samuel Palmer, Cambridge, 1988, p. 151, no. 412 (iv).

Exhibited

Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Samuel Palmer and 'The Ancients', 1984, no. 91.
London, Leger Galleries Ltd., Samuel Palmer, 1992, no. 10.

Engraved

For C. Dickens, Pictures from Italy, published by Bradbury and Evans, London, 1846.

Lot Essay

The present drawing is one of five designs for Charles Dickens’ (1812-1870) Pictures from Italy, 1846. The other four were based on studies Palmer made in Italy. This one, however, is a bucolic, idealized composition designed to surround an area of text. Lister in his catalogue raisonné, loc. cit., describes it as 'the most original and most idyllic of the designs’. It includes strong echoes of William Blake’s work: the figure on the right picking fruit, for example, is comparable with a figure in Blake’s Songs of Innocence, pl. 2 'The Ecchoing [sic] Green’, and with one in 'The School-Boy’ and with his watercolor designs for Milton, The Brothers Seen by Comus Picking Grapes, (M. Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, New Haven and London, 1981, p. 374, no. 527, pl. 618).

These drawings would have been traced onto woodblocks, the tracing disappearing as the engraving progressed. The series, two of which are now in the Morgan Library, New York, were all in the collection of Mrs Caroline Scott until 1859. Caroline was the daughter of the renowned art dealer Paul Colnaghi (d. 1833) and married John Scott, founder and editor of the London Magazine and champion of the group of Whig ‘romantics’ that included John Keats (1795-1821), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), William Hazlitt (1778-1830) and Leigh Hunt (1784-1859). Several of them single out Colnaghi’s shop as an interesting place to visit. However Scott fought a duel arising from a literary quarrel concerning the reputation of the romantic poets and was mortally wounded. Samuel Palmer was recommended to Dickens as a suitable illustrator for his work by Paul Colnaghi's elder son Dominic. Dickens was pleased with the resulting illustrations and wrote to Palmer on the 13 May to assure him that `he would on no account dream of allowing the book to go to Press without the insertion of your name in the title.’

We are grateful to Colin Harrison for his help with this drawing.

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