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Samuel
Palmer
(Newington,
south London 1805 – 1881 Redhill, near
Reigate, Surrey)
The
Bellman
a.
The Bellman
Alexander 11 v/vii, Lister 11 v/vii
190 x 251 mm (plate); 167 x 236 mm (image); 215 x 282 mm (sheet)
Etching,
1879. The plate signed and dated. First published
state, 1879, one of 60 de-luxe pencil-signed impressions,
with an etched Remarque of a branch, issued by
the Fine Art Society, before their lettered edition.
On laid paper, overall in very good condition.
A short repaired tear at the right sheet edge and
a few tiny foxmarks in the lower margin. An
unidentified collector’s mark verso blue
initials W F M JR. and another (a variant
of the first?)
£16500
b.
The Bellman
Alexander 11 vii/vii, Lister 11 vii/vii
190 x 251 mm (plate); 167 x 236 mm (image); 286 x 403 mm (sheet)
A
Trio* impression, the F.A.S. lettering of the 6th
state removed (not illustrated). With the engraved
triangle added. Initialled in pencil by Short,
Hardie and Griggs. Final issue before cancellation
of the plate. Edition of 60, published by the Cotswold
Gallery 1926. On antique laid paper with a Strasbourg
Bend watermark. Ex
collection: Kenneth Guichard
Sold
*
See Palmer’s
Legacy, introduction to the Goldsmiths’ School
Etchers.
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Additional
Information about the Print
The
collector Leonard Rowe Valpy (Ruskin’s
solicitor), who became acquainted with Palmer in
1863 when he bought one of the artist’s works
in the Winter exhibition of the Old Water-Colour
Society, was responsible for the commission that
would occupy the artist for the rest of his life.
Valpy
left the choice of theme to Palmer, specifying
only something that chimed with the artist’s “inner
sympathies”.
In
1864 he agreed to Palmer’s
suggestion of a series of watercolours to illustrate
Milton’s L’Allegro and Il
Penseroso.
Palmer exhibited three of the eventual series of
eight finished watercolours at the Old Water-Colour
Society in 1868, including The Lonely Tower. The
remaining five appeared intermittently, between
1870 and 1881. The Bellman was only exhibited in
1882, after Palmer’s death, because he had
not considered it quite finished. It was while
carrying out small preparatory watercolours for
the intended full scale paintings that as early
as 1864 Palmer was considering a related series
of etchings. He wrote to Valpy in October that
year
The
Etching dream came over me in this way. I am
making my working sketches a quarter of the size
of the drawings, and was surprised and not displeased
to notice the variety – the difference of
each from all the rest. I saw within a set of highly-finished
etchings the size of Turner’s Liber
Studiorum;
and as finished as my moonlight with the cypresses;
a set making a book – a compact block of
work which I would fain hope might live when I
am with the fallen leaves.
However,
it was not till 1879, that Palmer turned to etching
the Milton subjects, of which only two plates
were achieved, The Bellman, published by the
Fine Art Society that year and The Lonely
Tower which appeared in the Etching Club’s
Twenty-one Etchings in 1880, a final contribution
to a Club publication in the penultimate year
of his life.
The
Bellman, etched before the full scale watercolour
was completed, is close to the preparatory watercolour
sketch (now in the Bernard Higgins Art Gallery,
Bedford) and relates to lines referring to the
close of day from Milton’s Il Penseroso
Or
the bellman’s drousie charm
To bless the dores from nightly harm
The
Bellman is literally a return to the Shoreham
period, for the village depicted is based on memories
of the real Shoreham, though set in a mountainous
landscape recalled from travels in Italy, Devon
or Wales.
Palmer
wrote to Hamerton on the 4 August 1879
I
am very glad that you like my Bellman. . . .
It is a breaking out of village-fever long after
contact - a dream of that genuine village where
I mused away some of my best years …
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