Samuel Palmer 1805-1881

Edward Harris, his Executor's sale at Christie's, 28th November 1910, lot 63, dimensions incorrectly listed as 10 1/2 by 20 1/2 in. (bt.Agnew for £27.6.0);
Benjamin Martin Chandler;
by descent to the present owner

Raymond Lister, Catalogue Raisonne of the Works of Samuel Palmer, 1988, p.210, no.677

The present watercolour dates from circa 1877 and is one of the most impressive watercolours from Palmer’s later years.  By this date his business affairs were in turmoil and illness frequently prevented him from working and yet here, he depicts an English idyll, a serene and outstandingly beautiful landscape, a world completely divorced from the difficult realities of his own life.  

The peasant girl acts as the focus in the present watercolour and appears to almost float in the landscape like a disembodied spirit as she walks her cattle homewards, guiding them with a leafy branch.  She has been completely removed from the hardships which characterised the real world of nineteenth century agriculture and instead appears to have stepped out of an imaginary world or the classical Arcadia of the Eclogues of Virgil. The visionary quality of the watercolour is heightened by the setting sun, which bursts through the trees and fills the sky with oranges and reds.  It is a romantic and idealised scene and appears to have gone through what Palmer called ‘the intense purifying separating transmuting heat of the soul’s infabulous alchymy’ (Letters, p.16; see Raymond Lister, Catalogue Raisonee of the Works of Samuel Palmer, 1988, p.13)

Landscape with Peasant Girl Minding Cattle demonstrates the artist’s technical versatility and his increased interest in mixing different media and techniques.  He combines watercolour and bodycolour, heightened the colour and richness using gum arabic and adds details by scratching the surface of the paper.  This use of scratching out is particularly evident in the shafts of light which fall through the trees, on the branches and in the foreground. This watercolour is squared for transfer which indicates that it was Palmer's intention to make an engraving of this subject