Samuel Palmer: vision and landscape
21 October 2005 – 22 January 2006
Room 35
Exhibition closed
A major retrospective marking the 200th anniversary of the great
English Romantic painter.
From John Ruskin to Lucian Freud, Palmer’s diverse output has
infused the English imagination for nearly 200 years. Now, for the
first time in a generation, this British Museum exhibition sets his
most influential work (including A Cornfield by Moonlight and The
Magic Apple Tree) in full context alongside some 150 watercolours,
sketches and etchings. It traces the deliberate ‘primitivism’ of
his early material, inspired by Blake, Milton and Dürer; his
meditative public career in the 1840s; and the bold revival of his
‘inner sympathies’ in the 1860s.
Samuel Palmer was a master at bridging tradition and experiment.
There has never been a more appropriate time to rediscover his
world.
Organised by the British Museum and The Metropolitan Museum of
Art.
Supported by the American Friends of the British Museum.
Image: Samuel Palmer, The Magic Apple
Tree, 1830 © 2005 Fitzwilliam Museum, University of
Cambridge