SAMUEL PALMER
Newington, south London 1805 – 1881 Redhill, near Reigate
Though his friend Calvert had made Blake-inspired engravings in Shoreham,
and Palmer was greatly influenced by William Blake’s small wood engravings
for Dr Thornton’s School edition of the Pastorals of Virgil,
it was only in 1850, at the suggestion of his friend Charles West Cope,
that he joined the Etching Club and took up etching.
He became an enthusiast for the technique, even though over the next thirty years
he only finished thirteen plates.
Opening the Fold or Early Morning
Alexander 13 vi/viii, Lister 13 viii/x
151 x 214 (bevelled plate); 117 x 176 mm (image); 215 x 319 mm (sheet)
Etching, 1880.
The plate signed.
With two lines of verse (lines 25 & 26) engraved in the lower plate border by A H Palmer
for the standard small paper edition of An English Version of the Eclogues of Virgil
by Samuel Palmer, with Illustrations by the Author, published for him by Seeley & Company,
1884, printed on cream wove paper.
£1500
Opening the Fold illustrates the Eighth Eclogue (lines 23-8) which Palmer translated as
Scarce with her rosy fingers had the dawn
From glimmering heaven the veil of night withdrawn,
And folded flocks were loose to browse anew
O’er mountain thyme or trefoil wet with dew,
When leaning sad an olive stem beside,
These, his last numbers, hapless Damon plied.
There is a very close watercolour of this subject, in the same direction, which suggests
that the etching came first.
In 1872 Palmer had sent his own English verse translation of Virgil’s Eclogues (at which he had worked for years) to Hamerton, who advised on publishing only if Palmer
accompanied the text with etchings. Palmer worked on designs for these in drawings and
watercolours throughout the last decade of his life.
Only Opening the Fold was finished and independently published in his lifetime
(by the Fine Art Society in 1880).
Palmer had begun work on another four uniformly smaller plates.
His son, A H Palmer, completed these, and with Opening the Fold (and the addition of
heliogravure facsimiles of some of the other preliminary drawings), had his father’s
illustrated translation published by Seeley & Company in various editions in 1883 and 1884.
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