Samuel Palmer 1805-1881

In the summer of 1838, during their Italian honeymoon, Samuel and Hannah Palmer stayed at a small inn at Corpo di Cava, overlooking a ravine and a Benedictine monastery, ‘as fine a subject as Poussin ever chose’ (see Edward Malins, Samuel Palmer’s Italian Honeymoon, 1968, p. 72). Combining the poetry and mysticism of the Shoreham period with new Italianate sense of composition and structure, Palmer produced some of his finest watercolours during this happy period. Here, as he told George Richmond, he believed himself to be ‘no longer a mere maker of sketches, but an artist’ (Malins, op cit, p. 73). In the present watercolour a woman herds her goats along a familiar route, pausing to greet a family resting by the wayside, her gesture towards the monastery and the golden light that bathes the scene seeming to underline the sense of spiritual wellbeing the artist enjoyed at this time. Another watercolour of similar dimensions, of the same scene from a different viewpoint, is in the collection of the Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield (see Raymond Lister, Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of Samuel Palmer, 1988, no 311, pp. 126-27, illustrated) and another dated 1844 (Lister, op cit. no. 392 pp. 144-45, illustrated).