Samuel
Palmer
(Newington,
south London 1805 – 1881 Redhill, near
Reigate, Surrey)
Christmas or Folding
the Last Sheep
a.
Christmas or Folding the Last Sheep
Alexander 4 iv/v, Lister 4 iv/v
124 x 103 mm (bevelled plate); 100 x 80 mm (image); 290 x 214 mm (sheet)
Etching,
1850. The plate signed. First published state,
1882, lettered with Palmer’s name and the
title “Christmas” From Bampfylde’s
Sonnet, and issued by A H Palmer in Samuel
Palmer. A Memoir. (It would be re-issued
in 1926 in the Trio printing*, edition of 75.)
On laid paper, the extreme sheet edge red on three
sides.
*
See paragraph five in the The
Goldsmiths’ School Etchers in
the Palmer’s
Legacy exhibition.
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b.
Christmas or Folding the Last Sheep
124 x 103 mm (bevelled plate); 100 x 80 mm (image); 215 x 181 mm (sheet)
Another
impression, in the same state (not illustrated),
on different paper with smaller margins. Printed
with slightly more retroussage at the
bottom right.
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Additional
Information about the Print
The theme is from a sonnet by John Codrington
Bampfield (1754-96)
…Old
Christmas comes to close the wanèd
year,
And aye the shepherd’s heart to make right glad;
Who, when his teeming flocks are homeward had,
To blazing hearth repairs, and nut brown beer;
And views, well-pleas’d the ruddy prattlers dear
Hug the grey mongrel; … |
The Etching Club had already proposed the illustration of twenty miscellaneous ‘Sonnets’ in
1849 as the next project for publication. The Minutes
for 13 July 1850 record that the etchings for the ‘Sonnets’ are
produced, two being by Palmer.
By
27 Dec 1850 they had balloted on the plates for ‘Sonnets’.
Four by Palmer are listed as accepted –
- Bampfield
- The
Lark
- Shepherd
- and Evening
However,
discussions with the Art Union for London were
drawn out and ‘Sonnets’ as such was
never published but developed into the “Etchings
for the Art Union of London…”, published
in 1857, in which only Palmer’s ‘Skylark’ of
his four 1850 etchings was included, together with
the later etchings ‘The
Sleeping Shepherd’ and ‘The
Rising Moon’.
Already
in the previous meeting on 6 Dec 1850 the Club
had resolved on a second Part of “Songs
of Shakespeare” (see the following
item)
and this took priority.
(It
would also be one of the five plates printed
by ‘The Trio’ - Short, Hardie & Griggs* in
1926, and issued in an edition of 75 impressions
by the Cotswold Gallery, after which the plate
was cancelled, the image being scored through
with a vertical line.)
*
See Palmer’s
Legacy, introduction to the Goldsmiths’ School
Etchers.
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