Samuel Palmer, R.W.S

Leonard Rowe Valpy;
Campbell Blair, of North Wales;
T.G. MacGill Duncan, M.C.;
Niall MacGill Duncan;
sale, London, Christie’s, 9 November 1976, lot 131 (as The Evening Ploughman)

Probably London, Old Watercolour Society, 1864, no. 196;
Probably Paris, L'Exposition Universelle, 1867, no. 79;
London, Victoria & Albert Museum, Vision Recaptured, 1978, no. XVI (b)

Ed. R. Lister, The Letters of Samuel Palmer, vol. II, Oxford 1974, p. 691;
A. Fawcus et al., Samuel Palmer: A Vision Recaptured: The Complete Etchings and the Paintings for Milton and for Virgil, London, 1978, p. 35;
R. Lister, Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of Samuel Palmer, Cambridge 1988, p. 218, M7

The work has been well preserved. The colours are bright and fresh. At the lower left hand edge there is a repaired tear, but this can only be seen on very close spicer ion. The work has not been laid down.
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Together both, ere the high lawns appear’d
Under the opening eye-lids of the morn,
we drove afield, and both together heard
What time the grey-fly winds her sultry horn

The present work dates from circa 1873 and is a study on which a larger watercolour was based.¹ It illustrates the above lines from John Milton’s Lycidas. Here, a weary ploughman sets out towards the fields with his team of oxen under the brilliantly coloured ‘opening eye-lids’ of the dawn sky. The landscape, with distant cypress trees and mountainous hills, is reminiscent of Italy and the hilltop castle may well be based on Palmer’s early studies of Harlech Castle.²

Palmer had been interested in Milton from his early childhood, his nurse having presented him with a copy of Jacob Tonson’s edition of the poet’s works. Raymond Lister commented that 'seldom has a painter loved and understood a poet as Palmer loved and understood Milton.'³ In 1855 and 1856, he exhibited three watercolours illustrating Milton’s Comus at the Old Watercolour Society and, in 1864, inspired by the interest in his work shown by L.R. Valpy, John Ruskin’s solicitor, he turned his attention to illustrating Milton’s L’Allegro and Il Penseroso. As well as owning the present work, L.R. Valpy eventually commissioned eight of these large watercolours.

1. R. Lister, op. cit., p. 218, M8
2. R. Lister, op. cit., 1988, pp. 116-7, nos. 267 and 269
3. R. Lister, op. cit., 1988, p. 8