185
most notable is the etching of
The Lonely Tower
(1879). He became a full
member of the Water Colour Society in 1854, and its annual show gave him a
yearly goal to work towards. His best late works include a series of large
watercolours illustrating Milton's poems
L'Allegro
and
Il Penseroso
and his
etchings, a medium in which he worked from 1850 onwards, including a set
illustrating Virgil.
Palmer's later years were darkened by the death in 1861,
at the age of
19, of his elder son Thomas More Palmer – a devastating blow from which he
never fully recovered. He lived in various places later in his life, including a
small cottage and an unaffordable villa both inKensington, then a cottage
at Reigate. But it was only when a small measure of financial security came
his way, that was he able to move to Furze Hill House in Redhill, Surrey,
from 1862. He could not afford to have a daily newspaper delivered to
Redhill, suggesting that his financial circumstances there were still tight.
Samuel Palmer died in Redhill, Surrey, and
is buried with his wife in
Reigate churchyard.
Samuel Palmer was largely forgotten after his death. In 1909, many of his
Shoreham works were destroyed by his surviving son Alfred Herbert Palmer,
who burnt "a great quantity of father's handiwork ... Knowing that no one
would be able to make head or tail of what I burnt; I wished to save it from a
more humiliating fate". The destruction included "sketchbooks, notebooks,
and
original works, and lasted for days". It wasn't until 1926 that Palmer's
rediscovery began through a show curated by Martin Hardie at the Victoria &
Albert Museum,
Drawings, Etchings and Woodcuts made by Samuel Palmer
and other Disciples of William Blake
. But it took until the early 1950s for his
reputation to recover, stimulated by Geoffrey Grigson's 280-page
book
Samuel Palmer
(1947) and later by an exhibition of the Shoreham work
in 1957 and by Grigson's 1960 selection of Palmer's writing. His reputation
rests
mainly on his Shoreham work, but some of his later work has recently
received more appreciation.
The Shoreham work has had a powerful influence on many English artists
after being rediscovered. Palmer was a notable influence on F.L.
Griggs, Robin Tanner, Graham Sutherland, Paul Drury, Joseph Webb, Eric
Ravilious, the glass engraving of Laurence Whistler, and Clifford Harper. He
also inspired a resurgence in twentieth-century landscape printmaking, which
began amongst students at Goldsmiths' College in the 1920s. (See: Jolyon
Drury, 2006)
In 2005 the British Museum collaborated with
the Metropolitan Museum of
Art to stage the first major retrospective of his work, timed to coincide with
the bicentenary of Palmer's birth. The show ran from October 2005 – January
2006, and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York, March – May
2006.
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