Samuel Palmer: Paintings And Drawings (Ashmolean Handbooks)

A tree-hugger ahead of his time,wrote the New York Times of Samuel Palmer, whose meticulous drawings and paintings of nature nearly transcend reality as they reflect the mysterious harmony that exists in the natural world. Palmer is the least known and perhaps the most original of the great British romantic landscape painters of the first half of the 19th century. In this book Palmers dark landscape sepias of trees, forest and animals reveal his talent.

Not as well known as Turner or Constable, this artist favored paper over canvas and rarely created pictures larger than the size of an open book. Seldom did he use oils and, like his friend William Blake, he concocted paint mixtures.

Also recognized for his realistic painting and for his golden views of Rome inspired by the classics in the Victorian mode, he has periodically been in and out of vogue, and it is other artists that champion him as much as critics. He was lauded by the Pre-Raphaelites (1870s); his etchings were discovered by the English neo-Romantics in the late 1920s; he was found again in the 1940s, then again, in the 1950s by Lucian Freud and the English eccentrics.

The book covers his career and major works, including his visionary pieces, crated during his Shoreham period.