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You are hereHarvey-LeeHomeHarvey-LeeWeb ExhibitionsHarvey-LeePalmer IntroductionHarvey-LeePalmer's Legacy

PALMER'S LEGACY
The neo-romantic pastoral tradition in the 20th & 21st centuries.

Introduction

Etching in 19th century England, up to about 1860, was practised as an independent creative medium only by a few self-taught artists, usually for their own pleasure rather than publication.
In the early years of the century some of the Norwich School, lead by John Crome, had etched a few landscape plates, inspired by Dutch 17th century artists, and John Sell Cotman had etched and published series of architectural etchings.
A few British artists who had studied in Rome, where the technique had not been eclipsed by reproductive engraving, also took up etching in a modest way. As did some gentry or aristocrats as amateurs.
British professional printmaking at the time tended towards mixed engraving methods – line, stipple and mezzotint – for the purposes of reproducing paintings, or etching and aquatint, frequently hand-coloured, for sporting subjects, flowers, caricatures and other decorative prints.
A growing renewed interest in original etching as the decades progressed had been reflected in the founding of The Etching Club in 1838, and it was the invitation to join that Club that had lead Samuel Palmer to take up etching in 1850 .

By the demise of the Etching Club in the 1880’s the etching ethos had changed.
Seymour Haden, professionally a surgeon, and an amateur etcher, sympathetic to the French etching ‘revival’, had resigned from the Etching Club and established in 1881 the Society of Painter-Etchers , soon to be given Royal approval and renamed the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers. Haden attracted membership by an initial ‘open’ exhibition, inviting artists from France and America as well as Britain to participate. By the beginning of the 20th century the Etching Revival had become an Etching Boom.
Haden had disagreed with the old Etching Club both in its literary tendencies and stylistic approach of close working of the whole plate. An admirer of Rembrandt and contemporary Parisian etching, Haden in his earlier etchings favoured, like them, an open, airy line contrasted with blank areas on the plate. His younger American brother-in-law, Whistler, with whom Haden worked closely in 1857-58, when both artists first seriously embarked on etching, had at this time been a reluctant member of the short-lived Junior Etching Club, where a more sketchy linear style had also held sway. Through the following decades Whistler would give British etching an impetus and by the early 1900’s (he died 1903) he was an influence on many younger etchers and etching in general had become a popular activity. From the later years of the 19th century art schools had been established with dedicated teachers of etching. Rembrandt and Van Dyck were exemplars, as well as the teachers themselves, initially Frank Short and Alphonse Legros (both in Whistler’s circle) and later Malcolm Osborne, Alfred Bentley, Stanley Anderson and Robert Austin, all taught by Short.

Intensely worked and reworked etchings like those of Samuel Palmer were generally out of vogue. (Graham Sutherland recalling his student days in the etching class at Goldsmiths’ commented that As we became familiar with Palmer’s later etchings, we bit our plates deeper. We had always been warned against overbiting. But we did overbite and we burnished our way through innumerable states quite unrepentant at the way we punished and maltreated the copper... .)

Frederick Griggs was the first artist to ‘rediscover’ Palmer. By coincidence Griggs’ discovery of the Cotswold town of Chipping Campden, where he settled in 1904, had a significance for him similar to that of Shoreham for Palmer.

From 1912 when he took up etching, Griggs’ admiration for Palmer is apparent, though even from the first plates, architecture (rather than shepherd and flocks) dominates the landscape. Within a decade Griggs was a mentor for a younger generation of etchers and together with Martin Hardie and Frank Short reawakened recognition for Palmer's genius.

 

Frederick L. Griggs R.A., R.E.
Hitchin 1876 - 1938 Chipping Campden

Griggs greatly admired Palmer's etchings. Both artists shared a visionary imagination, a technical enjoyment in close-worked plates and were deeply religious. Griggs wrote in a letter to R A Walker in 1925, "My love for the things Samuel Palmer loved is my first & last love, & I know no other artist who loved them so well, and whose love showed forth in his work. How could a certainly 'affinity' be avoided in such a case?"

Griggs had no formal instruction in the technique of etching, he was trained as an architect, but his early etchings (especially 'Maur's Farm' and 'Priory Farm'), share with Palmer's the intensely worked surface and a warm glimmering through of light, as they also express a deeply felt poetry of nostalgia. Griggs was thirty-six and already established as an architectural draughtsman when he turned seriously to etching; Palmer was an established watercolour painter of forty-five before his friend and fellow artist Charles West Cope encouraged him to take up etching.

By contrast to Palmer, Griggs found his inspiration not in the pastoral verse of Virgil or Milton but in the glories of gothic architecture and the mysteries of the Catholic faith which designed and built them. Griggs converted to Catholicism in 1912, the very year he began to etch in earnest. On several of his plates (though sometimes removed in later states) he etched apposite quotations from the Bible.

As an older but contemporary physical presence and example, Griggs was a powerful intermediary in transmitting Palmeresque Pastoralism to the next generation of etchers, several of whom he welcomed to Campden for demonstration printings from their plates at the Dover's Press. And his contact with A H Palmer (then living in Canada) resulted in the new editions of five of Samuel Palmer's etchings.

Frederick Griggs | St Botolph’s Bridge | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
 
Frederick Griggs | St Botolph’s Bridge | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
Frederick L. Griggs
St Botolph’s Bridge (No.1)
Etching, 1917
 
Frederick L. Griggs
St Botolph’s Bridge (No.2)
Etching, 1936-37

Joseph Webb A.R.E.
Ealing 1908 - 1962 London

Webb began to etch in 1927, under the supervision of Henry Daniel, during his Scholarship years at the Patrick Allan-Fraser of Hospitalfield School of Art in Arbroath. On his return to London in 1928 Webb continued to etch under Hubert Schröder at Chiswick School of Art.

Webb had a deep feeling for the English countryside. In the summer of 1928 he toured Gloucestershire and followed the Wye Valley Walk - looking for motifs to paint and etch - and from the evidence of some of the etchings, selected subjects that reflected the etchers he admired, such as Rembrandt (Webb's 'The Horse Doctor', 1928) and Griggs ( both Webb's etchings of the castle at Chepstow).

The following year Webb visited Campden and Griggs demonstrated his printing techniques on Webb's 'Rat Barn' and 'Dream Barn' plates, as well as enthusing over the emotional power of Palmer's etchings. Webb shared Griggs' love of old architecture. Most of his plates have an architectural theme, several envision imaginary buildings with an intense religious mysticism, but determined by Theosophy, rather than Catholicism, in the case of Webb.

Like Palmer, Webb obviously responded to the poetry of Milton and quoted lines from Il Penseroso on the preparatory drawing to his etching 'Lincoln, Sunrise'.

Chepstow | Joseph Webb | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
Joseph Webb
Chepstow
Etching, 1928

Stanley Roy Badmin R.E.
Sydenham 1906 - 1989 Bignor, Sussex

Though he grew up in a London suburb, Badmin learnt to love the English countryside on family holidays visiting his grandfather, a carpenter and cabinetmaker in the Somerset village of Holcombe in the Mendips.

Badmin took up etching as a postgraduate of the Royal College of Art in evening classes at the College in 1927-28. His tutor, Robert Austin, introduced him to his own dealer, the XXI Gallery, (who had also published Griggs' etchings from 1915-1920) where Sutherland and Drury were contemporary student exhibitors.

(It is a sad postscript coincidence that in 1938, by which time like many other artists, including Griggs, Badmin had abandoned etching as unremunerative, he was commissioned by Macmillan to produce the additional illustrations needed for Highways and Byways in Essex, which the ailing Griggs had been unable to fulfil.)

The Field Corner | Stanley Roy Badmin | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
Stanley Roy Badmin
The Field Corner
Etching, 1928

 


Goldsmiths' School Etchers

The now much-celebrated Goldsmiths group, students at the University of London Goldsmiths' College School of Art, based at New Cross, comprised Graham Sutherland, Paul Drury, William Larkins, Edward Bouverie Hoyton and Robin Tanner. In a short span of years in the middle and late 1920's they produced a small body of intensely romantic Pastoral prints idealising the English countryside, giving expression to their heightened emotional feel for Nature, looking back to Samuel Palmer, at a period when this centuries old rural way of life was disappearing under the pressure of modern agricultural developments.

They were part of a larger re-awakening to the visionary art of Palmer.

In 1925 Lawrence Binyon's book, The Followers of William Blake: Edward Calvert, Samuel Palmer, George Richmond & their Circle, was published. Binyon was Keeper at the British Museum.

Bouverie Hoyton in conversation in 1974 with Joe Graffy of the Penn Print Room remembered that Fred Richards, a tutor at Goldsmiths, had given a lecture, with slides, on 19th century etching, which included Palmer's 'Herdsman's Cottage' as issued in the 1880 edition of Hamerton's Etching & Etchers and that William Larkins (the only member of the group not actually to produce pastoral subjects) had bought a copy of the book in the Charing Cross Road. Graham Sutherland recalling the time, in the Introduction to William Weston's 1973 catalogue The English Vision, describes the impact of looking at the impression of Palmer's 'The Herdsman's Cottage' "I was amazed at its completeness, both emotional and technical .(and) that the complex variety of lines could form a tone of such luminosity. . It seemed to me wonderful that a strong emotion, such as was Palmer's, could change and transform the appearance of things."

In 1924 Griggs had contacted A H Palmer, the son of the artist, then resident in Canada, who sent him eight of his father's uncancelled plates to print from. Griggs consulted with Frank Short, Professor of Engraving at the Royal College of Art & his friend Martin Hardie, Keeper of Prints & Drawings at the adjacent Victoria & Albert Museum, who was planning a Palmer exhibition. A H Palmer dubbed them 'The Trio'. They oversaw the printing of editions of 50 to 75 impressions from five of the plates. Each impression had an engraved triangle together with the Trio's pencil initials in the lower margin. They were published by the Cotswold Gallery, London, to coincide with Hardie's Palmer retrospective exhibition at the V & A in 1926, Exhibition of Drawings, Etchings and Woodcuts by Samuel Palmer and Other Disciples of Blake.

Bouverie Hoyton also observed that Griggs had "stimulated what was obviously a creative renaissance of thought and feeling and attitude towards pastoral work".

Sutherland and Drury visited Griggs in 1926. A particularly significant year for Sutherland who was, like Griggs, a convert to Catholicism and would be accepted into the Roman Catholic Church in December that year. Hoyton remembered encountering Griggs in the printing room at the Royal College of Art in London and discussing rags used for wiping plates. "He was very kind in a purely practical way".

Graham Sutherland
London 1903 - 1980 Trottiscliffe, Kent

Sutherland trained as an etcher at Goldsmiths’ from 1920-25. He had his first exhibition in 1924, while still a student. At this period his etchings show a variety of influences and dialogues with the established masters of etching such as Rembrandt and Whistler. The eight plates he produced in the years 1925 to 1928, passionately intense rural idylls, show the full impact of Palmer and a transformation in Sutherland’s style. Those of 1926-28, in their themes and titles, also reflect his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1926.
By 1929 he felt he had reached a cul-de-sac with the rural idyll and the subsequent few etchings are informed by elements of menace, tragedy and surrealism. In 1930 he turned to painting and had effectively abandoned etching by 1932, but for two semi-abstract landscapes of Wales in 1938. His later printmaking would use the medium of colour lithography.

Graham Sutherland | The Sluice Gate | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
 
Graham Sutherland | Lammas | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
Graham Sutherland
The Sluice Gate
Etching, 1924
 
Graham Sutherland
Lammas
Etching, 1926

Paul Drury P.R.E.
London 1903 - 1897 Nutley, Sussex

Though predominantly a portrait artist, in his final two years at Goldsmiths, 1925-6 and up to 1933, Drury produced five landscape plates influenced by Palmer including his masterpiece in the genre, 'September'.

Paul Drury | September | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
Paul Drury
September
Etching, 1928

Edward Bouverie Hoyton
Lewisham 1900 - 1988 Newlyn

A contemporary student of Paul Drury and Graham Sutherland (who remained a life-long friend) at the Goldsmiths' College School of Art, Hoyton won the Prix de Rome in Engraving in 1926, after several attempts, and was taken up by The Fine Art Society. He spent three years in Rome. Morgan Hayes, was one of several Devon subjects from this period, published while he was away in Rome. He was the only member of the group to experience Italian light and the Roman Campagna which had so influenced Palmer and before him the 17th century etchers of idyllic landscapes.

Edward Bouverie Hoyton | Morgan Hayes | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
Edward Bouverie Hoyton
Morgan Hayes
Etching, 1927

Robin Tanner A.R.E.
Bristol 1904 - 1988 Kington Langley, Wiltshire

Tanner alone of the Goldsmiths School group retained in his later etchings the pastoral vision of his student years. Tanner studied etching at evening classes at Goldsmiths after he had taken up his first teaching post in 1924. He had encountered the work of Griggs for the first time at the 1923 R.E. annual exhibition. Tanner's first etching was made in 1926 and he visited the big Palmer exhibition that year too at the V. & A. In 1928 he settled permanently in Wiltshire to etch full time, acquiring his own press. The crash in the market after 1929 forced him back to teaching, and he had little time to etch, even more so after his appointment in 1935 as an Inspector of Schools. He had produced twenty-three plates when he abandoned etching in 1946. But in 1970, in his retirement, he took up etching again, reworking and re-editioning some of the early plates and producing twenty-eight new ones.

He and his wife Heather loved the Wiltshire countryside and in the village of Kington Langley, found their equivalent of Palmer's Shoreham and Grigg's Campden, an idyll celebrated in their book Wiltshire Village.

In a taped message for the opening of his last exhibition Tanner summed up his work.

I regard what I have etched as the natural overflow of my deep love of the Wiltshire countryside where most of my life has been spent. . When people call me a "Samuel Palmerish pastoral etcher" I feel bound to assert that my work is also a protest at the ruthless raping of the earth today. Of course I am an idealist. My etched world is an ideal world, a world of pastoral beauty that could still be ours if we did but desire it passionately enough, instead of poisoning it.

 

Robin Tanner | The Road Mender | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
Robin Tanner | The Meadow Stile | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
Robin Tanner | The Hedger | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
Robin Tanner
The Road Maker (ii)
Etching, 1928
Robin Tanner
The Meadow Stile
Etching, 1970
Robin Tanner
The Hedger
Etching, 1928
Robin Tanner | The Plough | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
 
Robin Tanner | The Old Thorn | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
 
Robin Tanner | December | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
Robin Tanner
The Plough
Etching, 1973
 
Robin Tanner
The Old Thorn
Etching, 1975
 
Robin Tanner
December
Etching, 1978

 


A Continuing Tradition

Though Modern British ‘pastoral’ etching is most associated with the artists trained at the Goldsmiths’ School, Palmer has continued to inspire later artists into the 21st century, and not just in this country as is witnessed by the example of Ron McBurnie.

George Tute R.E., S.W.E.
Born Hull 1933

Tute trained as an artist at Blackpool and the Royal Academy Schools 1948-58 until his National Service. He worked in an RAF Exhibition and Display Unit in London, which was opposite the Central School of Arts & Crafts, and so was able to attend evening classes. There, on a course given by Gertrude Hermes, he discovered wood engraving, a medium he made central to his expression. He has worked both as an illustrator and on independent prints. He was the first Chairman of the present Society of Wood Engravers, having been instrumental in its revival in 1984.

George Tute | Bather in a Landscape | Wood Engraving | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
George Tute
Bather in a Landscape
Wood engraving, c1979

Ron McBurnie
Born Brisbane, Australia 1957

McBurnie trained at Queensland College of Art 1975-78 and since 1985 has taught printmaking and book arts at the James Cook University School of Creative Arts in Townsville, Queensland. Though in the Antipodes, he is very aware of and responsive to European traditions of etching.

He has commented -

"The Romantic etchings began as a result of my growing interest in the work produced by a small group of British artists known as 'The Ancients'. I had just purchased an etching entitled The Herdsman's Cottage by Samuel Palmer .

In it I saw possibilities for bringing a sense of wonder and mystery back into the landscape where I lived."

And by coincidence, when Samuel Palmer's The Herdsman's Cottage was published by P G Hamerton in The Portfolio in 1872, Palmer had written in a letter to Hamerton,

"Who knows, however, but that The Portfolio may span the globe that its etchings may sparkle in Australia ?"

Ron McBurnie | Eurydice | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
 
Ron McBurnie | Full Moon over Sandgate | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
Ron McBurnie
Eurydice
Etching & Roulette, 1997
 
Ron McBurnie
Full Moon over Sandgate
Etching & Aquatint, 1990

Kit Boyd
Born 1969

Boyd studied the visual arts at the University of Wales Aberystwyth 1988-91. After graduating, work in London included nine years with the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which chimed with his artistic concerns of "our relationship with the landscape and our place in nature .". In 2006 Boyd moved back for a couple of years to the Welsh marches to concentrate on his creative work.

"I work within the British romantic tradition. Recent work has been inspired by Samuel Palmer's visionary period in Shoreham."
"I lived in the rolling hills of the mid-Wales/Shropshire borders for two years before my move back to London and the vision of Samuel Palmer is alive - the moon rises above sheep fields and the lush vegetation twines darkly in old drovers' lanes".

Kit Boyd | Man on a Laptop | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
 
Kit Boyd | Night on the Lane | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
 
Kit Boyd | The Shining Path | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
Kit Boyd
Man on a Laptop (Early Morning)
Etching & Aquatint, 2012
 
Kit Boyd
Night on the Lane
Etching & Aquatint, 2011
 
Kit Boyd
The Shining Path
Etching & Aquatint, 2012

 


 

Bibliography

  • Chris BEETLES: S R Badmin and the English Landscape. (Collins, 1985)
  • Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, Dept of Fine Art: George Tute. Wood Engraver. Retrospective Exhibition 1986
  • Francis Adams COMSTOCK: A Gothic Vision: F L Griggs and his Work. (Boston Public Library & The Ashmolean, 1966, reprinted 1978)
  • Gordon COOKE: Graham Sutherland. Early Etchings (Cooke, 1993)
  • Gordon Cooke: Samuel Palmer. His Friends and Followers (Fine Art Society 2011)
  • Robin GARTON: The Catalogue Raisonné of the Prints of Paul Drury, 1903-1987 (Garton & Co.1992)
  • Richard T Godfrey: Printmaking in Britain. (Phaidon 1978)
  • Kenneth Guichard: British Etchers 1850-1940. (R Garton 1977)
  • Ian Mackenzie: British Prints. Dictionary & Price Guide. (Antique Collectors’ Club, 1987)
  • Robert MEYRICK: Joseph Webb the lights that flit across my brain. (An Aberystwyth touring exhibition catalogue, 2007)
  • Jerrold Northrop Moore: F L Griggs The Architecture of Dreams. (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1999)
  • Jerrold Northrop Moore: The Green Fuse. Pastoral Vision in English Art 1820-2000. (Antique Collectors’ Club 2007)
  • William Weston: the English Vision. Etchings and Engravings by Edward Calvert, William Blake, Samuel Palmer, Graham Sutherland, Frederick Griggs and Paul Drury. Introduction by Graham Sutherland. (1973)

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Palmer's Legacy Exhibition

To view the entire Exhibition print-by-print, click this link and then follow the prints through the Gallery by using the "next print >" and "< previous print" navigation buttons. Alternatively, you can select an individual print from its thumbnail or title in the list below.

However, the exhibition is probably best viewed, in context, by clicking on the thumbnails within the related text in the left column of this introductory page. Each individual print in the exhibition has a link back to the Introductory text in the 'crumb trail' at the head of every page.

Frederick Griggs | St Botolph’s Bridge | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
 

Frederick L. Griggs
St Botolph's Bridge (No.1)
Etching, 1917

Frederick Griggs | St Botolph’s Bridge | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee

Frederick L. Griggs
St Botolph’s Bridge (No.2)
Etching, 1936-37

Chepstow | Joseph Webb | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
 

Joseph Webb
Chepstow
Etching, 1928

The Field Corner | Stanley Roy Badmin | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee

Stanley Roy Badmin
The Field Corner
Etching, 1928

Graham Sutherland | The Sluice Gate | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee

Graham Sutherland
The Sluice Gate
Etching, 1924

Graham Sutherland | Lammas | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee

Graham Sutherland
Lammas
Etching, 1926

Paul Drury | September | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee

Paul Drury
September
Etching, 1928

Edward Bouverie Hoyton | Morgan Hayes | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee

Edward Bouverie Hoyton
Morgan Hayes
Etching, 1927

 
Robin Tanner | The Road Mender | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
Robin Tanner
The Road Maker (ii)
Etching, 1928
Robin Tanner | The Hedger | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
Robin Tanner
The Hedger
Etching, 1928
Robin Tanner | The Meadow Stile | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
Robin Tanner
The Meadow Stile
Etching, 1970
Robin Tanner | The Plough | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee

Robin Tanner
The Plough
Etching, 1973

Robin Tanner | The Old Thorn | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
Robin Tanner
The Old Thorn
Etching, 1975
Robin Tanner | December | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
Robin Tanner
December
Etching, 1978
George Tute | Bather in a Landscape | Wood Engraving | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
George Tute
Bather in a Landscape
Wood engraving, c1979
 
Ron McBurnie | Eurydice | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee Ron McBurnie
Eurydice
Etching & Roulette, 1997
Ron McBurnie | Full Moon over Sandgate | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
Ron McBurnie
Full Moon over Sandgate
Etching & Aquatint, 1990
Kit Boyd | Man on a Laptop | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
Kit Boyd
Man on a Laptop (Early Morning)
Etching & Aquatint, 2012
Kit Boyd | Night on the Lane | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
Kit Boyd
Night on the Lane
Etching & Aquatint, 2011
 
Kit Boyd | The Shining Path | Etching | Elizabeth Harvey-Lee
Kit Boyd
The Shining Path
Etching & Aquatint, 2012

 

See also the associated exhibitions:

Poetry Made Visible
The Complete Etchings of Samuel Palmer

Palmer's Peers. The Etching Club
A brief account of The Etching Club, 1883-1885, and a list of its publications, with an exhibition of a selection of etchings by other members of the Club, and by contributors to the publication English Etchings, 1881.

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