|
Samuel
Palmer
(Newington,
south London 1805 – 1881 Redhill, near
Reigate, Surrey)
The Early Ploughman or
The Morning Spread upon the Mountains
a.
The Early Ploughman or The
Morning Spread upon the Mountains
Alexander 9 iv/viii, Lister 9 v/ix
179 x 252 mm (plate) 131 x 198 mm (image); 162 x 249 mm (sheet)
Etching,
begun 1861, though Palmer continued to work on
it in later years. The first published state, as
issued by Hamerton in Etching & Etchers,
1868. (A second edition, of 75, would be printed
by the Trio, published 1926.) Trimmed or printed
within the platemark, as issued to fit the page
size. On cream laid paper with a red outside edge.
The top border narrower.
Sold
|
|
Additional
Information about the Print
Lister
suggests a classical source for the figure of
the young woman emerging from the trees carrying
a pot on her head. Inspired by Blake, who had
borrowed poses from antique gems and coins, Palmer
too had a study collection of plaster casts of
antique gems. In a letter to a pupil, Miss Wilkinson,
in 1862 he recommended:
| At
home, when you design a figure for introduction
into your subject, after the first blot you
should draw it faintly, undraped, so as really
to know what the action is, and then add
the dress. … Mr. Newman made me eight
or ten of his cedar colour-boxes without
partitions, and a little deeper than usual,
in which I possess a fine sculpture-gallery,
having filled them with casts from the finest
antique gems. These are most useful for reference,
when working out lines caught from nature. |
Palmer
exhibited a proof at the Royal Academy in 1873
entitled with the Biblical quotation The Morning spread upon the Mountains (Joel
2:2), a title he had already used in referring
to the plate at an earlier stage.
|
b.
The Early Ploughman or The Morning
Spread upon the Mountains
Alexander vi or vii/viii, Lister 9 vii or viii/ix
179 x 252 mm (plate); 133 x 199 mm (image); 323 x
407 mm (sheet)
A
proof impression, in the sixth or seventh state,
the plate almost entirely re-worked since the
published state above. Signed in pencil and inscribed Finished
state
*. On stout wove paper.
£6500
|
|
*
The annotation Finished state was applied
to proofs printed by A H Palmer from 1873 on
the newly acquired ‘private press’ and
are generally considered the ‘choicest
proofs’. Herbert thought it a “great
pity” when his father reworked the plate
again in 1880.
|
