EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1.Brief Description of item(s)

  • Samuel Palmer (1805-1881)
  • The Shearers circa 1833-4
  • Oil and tempera over black chalk on oak
  • 517 x 711 mm
  • Condition: good

2.Context

  • Provenance:
  • Alfred (A.H.) Palmer, the artist’s son; his sale, Christie’s, 24 May 1909 (118) bt. Sampson; Christie’s sale, 25 May 1936 (109) bt. F.R. Meatyard; Leger Galleries, 1937, from whom acquired by Henry Reitlinger; his sale, Sotheby’s, 27 January 1954 (124) bt. Agnew’s.

Exhibited:

?Royal Academy, 1833 (657, ‘A Kentish Scene’)

Narrative Pictures of the I8th and 19th Centuries, Leger Galleries, 1937 (25)

Samuel Palmer and his Circle. The Shoreham Period, Arts Council, London1956 and 1957 (57)

Samuel Palmer: A Vision Recaptured: The Complete Etchings and the Paintings for Milton and for Virgil, Victoria and Albert Museum, London 1978-9 (11)

Samuel Palmer and ‘The Ancients’ , Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge 1984 (29)

Samuel Palmer, British Museum, London 2005-6 and Metropolitan Museum, New York 2006 (88)

Literature:

Sacheverell Sitwell, Narrative Pictures, 1937 pp.62-3, 100 repr. Pl.86

Geoffrey Grigson, Samuel Palmer: The Visionary Years, 1947, pp.110-11, 189 no.139 repr. Pl.63

Geoffrey Grigson, Samuel Palmer’s ‘Valley of Vision’, 1960, p.32 repr. pl.47

David Cecil, Visionary and Dreamer: Two Poetic Painters: Samuel Palmer and Edward Burne-Jones, 1969, repr. pl.44

Raymond Lister, Samuel Palmer and his Etchings, 1969, p.84 repr. Pl.35

James Sellars, Samuel Palmer, 1974, p.87 repr.

Raymond Lister, Samuel Palmer and ‘The Ancients’ , exhibition catalogue, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge 1984, pp.22-3 repr.

Raymond Lister, The Paintings of Samuel Palmer, 1985, repr.pl.31 with text

Raymond Lister, Samuel Palmer: His Life and Art, 1987, pp.63-4, 66 repr.

Raymond Lister, Catalogue Raisonne of the Works of Samuel Palmer, 1988, p.95, no.178 repr.

Colin Harrison in William Vaughan, Colin Harrison and Elizabeth. E. Barker,

Samuel Palmer, exhibition catalogue, British Museum, London 2005-6 and Metropolitan Museum, New York 2006, pp.137, 160 repr.

The Faber Gallery: Samuel Palmer 1805-1881, undated, repr. pl.6

3.Waverley criteria

  • Waverley 1: it is so closely connected with our history and national life that its departure would be a misfortune on the following grounds. It isa quintessential representation of English pastoral, based on Kentish scenery around Shoreham, and a climactic, indeed perhaps valedictory statement of Palmer’s ‘Shoreham Period’ when he created visionary, poetic and nostalgic work in opposition to the predominant naturalism of the day. At the same time, the picture reflects tension and unease associated with contemporary agricultural unrest and the impact of the Reform Bill
  • Waverley 2: It is of outstanding aesthetic significance as one of Palmer’s largest and most complete landscape paintings; one of a small group of works in oil (in this case also involving tempera) associated with Palmer’s Shoreham period; an exceptional demonstration of the artist’s development as a colourist; and unique in its dynamic representation of figures and agricultural labour and its materials
  • Waverley 3: It is of outstanding significance for the study of some particular branch of art, learning or history by its status as a consummate work of Palmer’s Shoreham period, which has been seen for much of the past century as a distinct and specially appealing strand of British Romanticism and also as a major inspiration to Post-Impressionism and Neo-Romanticism. At the same time, its portrayal of farm work sets it apart from the idealism and nostalgia that has resulted in Palmer’s relegation from some more recent critical discourse.

DETAILED CASE

1.Detailed description of item if more than in Executive summary, and any comments.

The Shearers depicts farm-workers shearing their sheep in a rolling, sunlit English landscape, seen from the interior of a large barn whose doors are opened inwards. One youth has already largely shorn one sheep while two others strain to control the animals awaiting attention. Three young women are also present, one holding a large bag to collect the newly-cut wool. In the foreground, inside the barn, is a complex still-life assemblage of farm implements including another set of shears, basket, pitchfork, small barrel and bottle of refreshments and a coat and straw hat arranged around or hanging on a large scythe – the hat marking the artist’s presence in the picture as it is, as his son described, ‘the large patterned straw hat … one of his father’s most cherished symbols of his Shoreham days’ (Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer, 1892, pp.47-8). Beyond the group of shearers stretches a lush, golden valley framed by arching trees and closed off in the distance by sheltering hills. The lighting is brilliant but autumnal, while the shadows in the barn are a mellow golden-brown.

Since at least 1824 when he first discovered it, from around 1827 when he moved there and until 1835, Palmer lived and worked at Shoreham in Kent. This ‘Shoreham Period’ famously produced his most original work. Inspired by the self-contained, timeless world of the Darent valley, his wide reading of literature from Virgil to Milton, his admiration of Blake, study of early ‘primitive’ art and abhorrence of modern urban and commercial life he constructed a ‘visionary’ style of landscape that was personal, emotional and intuitive and shared mainly with the closed circle of fellow ‘Ancients’ who visited him there. This vision was, he believed, in a direct continuum from the pastoral world of Virgil’s Eclogues and Georgics and also an expression of his strong religious faith which equated natural plenty with divine providenceand good husbandry with worship. While Palmer’s Shoreham work has exerted extraordinary posthumous appeal and continues to do so despite challenges from recent critics who have focused on more practical and functional depictions of rural life and landscape, it was at first shared only with a few, was not always exhibited and was sometimes problematic even within Palmer’s circle. His future father-in-law, John Linnell, urged him towards a more pragmatic, commercially-viable view of landscape while even his own son would find aspects of his early work eccentric or embarrassing.

Towards the mid 1830s, these pressures were hitting their mark and Palmer was entering a transitional phase. He had begun a gradual and reluctant withdrawal from Shoreham, dividing his time between Kent and London. He was painting more in oil. He increased his level of exhibiting, or at least had his submissions accepted more. He toned down the visionary intensity or fantasy of his first Kentish work while also heightening the brilliance of his colouring and the complexities of his technique. He began to look for new subject-matter, visiting Devon in 1834. He was also much affected by a changing political climate. As conventionally high Tory and Anglican in his religious and social views as he was quixotic in his artistic tastes, he was appalled by the changes wrought by the 1832 Reform Act such as the ending of the church’s rights to tithes, and his Address to the Electors of West Kent (published in 1832) was a near-hysterical counterblast, fuelled by fear of revolution. Meanwhile, there were rick-burnings and riots in the countryside, including those in Kent associated with ‘Captain Swing’. These were prompted by hardship or mechanisation as much as any political radicalisation. But in Palmer they prompted not so much sympathy for the farm-workers as dismay that his familiar world was falling apart.

Dating from 1833 or 1834, on stylistic grounds and/or because it might be identifiable with a Royal Academy exhibit of 1833, The Shearers must be seen against this mingled background although its impact is not made wholly explicit. Nor, since the 1833 RA picture is not certainly identifiable, was it necessarily made public and its iconic status among Palmer’s later Shoreham works has emerged in later exhibitions, beginning in 1933. Clearly, the background is Kentish, the valley being much the same as in Palmer’s exactly contemporary Golden Valley (in a New York collection, Lister 174), his ‘broadest and most brilliant panorama’ (Harrison in William Vaughan, Colin Harrison and Elizabeth. E. Barker 2005-6, p.157). From this time, there are a number of Shoreham-inspired landscapes in media ranging from monochrome wash through watercolour and gouache to oil and tempera in which what A.H. Palmer described as ‘the full vehemence of the true Shoreham mood’ is tempered by greater realism and recognisable activities such as harvesting, gleaning or wood-cutting. These move away from idylls like The Magic Apple Tree (Fitzwilliam Museum, Lister 127) or The Horse- Chestnut Tree (Ashmolean Museum, Lister 131) in which shepherds languish or pipe surrounded by their contented flocks. But The Shearerstakes this transformation further than any other work and the prevailing mood is one of repose. It is exceptional for its size, richness of colour, the urgency and drama of its narrative and the insistent realism with which the working implements are presented, even being given greater prominence than the figures who are using them or have laid them to rest.

These features combine to create at once Palmer’s most ambitious and assertive picture to date, and his most mysterious. There is a heroic intensity, even savagery to the way one shearer grasps a struggling sheep or another wields his blades, while the farm tools are combined in a group of opposing angles that seems more sinister than picturesque. The upward thrust of the scythe-blade is especially striking, evoking the passage of time or even the grim reaper; how significant is it that the artist has hung his hat and coat on its handle? That the picture is a farewell to a Shoreham now threatened by alien forces and in which he no longer felt so much at home, but whose natural setting he found as beautiful as ever might be one interpretation of the picture. Another, perhaps related, could be that Palmer conceived it as some kind of companion to the contemporary Sleeping Shepherd (James Fairfax, Lister 179) which is similarly set inside a barn and has a still-life of farm implements but, outside, depicts night rather than day. The juxtaposition of day and night was hard-wired into Palmer from many sources including his much loved ‘L’Allegro’ and ‘Il Penseroso’ of Milton while these two pictures oppose work and rest, struggle and peace and also, perhaps, the real and modern to the ideal since the shepherd is classically sourced from Virgil and an ancient statue of the sleeping Endymion in the British Museum. The Sleeping Shepherd is painted in similar media, smaller. But it could have suggested to Palmer a larger, more highly finished picture in a contrasting, contemporary vein. The strongest contemporary parallel is with Linnell whose influence was increasing at this time but about which Palmer felt ambivalent.Linnell seems to have urged Palmer to study still life as an antidote to visionary fancy and in general his advice led Palmer away from his hero, Blake. But it must be remembered that Linnell was also Blake’s patron and a final observation to be made of The Shearers is that it might be a rare instance of Palmer entering into Blake’s paradoxical and equivocal view of the fallen natural world. Palmer usually missed or ignored the tensions implicit in Blake’s depictions of the pastoral, famously seeing in Blake’s woodcuts for Dr Thornton’s edition of Virgil only ‘corners of Paradise’ when in fact the narrative of the shepherds Thenot and Colinet reveals tensions between their old age and youth, experience and innocence, and an ambiguous relationship to their surroundings. But the paradise depicted in The Shearers seems an uneasy one.

The picture is the largest of the small group of oils (or oils with mixed media) painted by Palmer at Shoreham. These were usually painted on thick wood panels, of mahogany or oak, but in several cases on paper than laid on to the panel. Not all are known today but of those that are the majority remain in the UK. These are: The Gleaning Field (Tate, Lister 164); The Bright Cloud (City Art Galleries Manchester, Lister 169); Scene at Underriver (private collection, Lister 170); Cornfield (Ashmolean Museum, Lister 171); and The White Cloud (private collection, Lister 175). Another, The Gleaning Field (Lister 167, whereabouts unknown) may have resurfaced recently and is in the UK. Outside the UK are The Harvest Moon (Yale Center for British Art, Lister 168) while The Sleeping Shepherd is to be sold in New York in January. Two drawings for the still life foreground are recorded, one known from reproduction as a frontispiece in A. H. Palmer’s Memoir and the other in the Yale Center for British Art (Lister 176, 177).

The picture is in excellent condition, stable and its colour retaining its brilliance.

2.Detailed explanation of the outstanding significance of the item.

The exceptional character and significance of The Shearers has long been recognised. It was inherited by A. H. Palmer, the artist’s son, who was the first to write on the oils of the Shoreham period (eg. Life and Letters, p.46). Subsequently it has been in important collections including that of Henry Reitlinger and has been shown in the major exhibitions of Palmer and his circle where its outstanding position among the works associated with Shoreham and also the artist’s output as an oil painter has been confirmed. For Lister it was ‘one of the most spectacular of Palmer’s late Shoreham works’ (Lister 1984, p.23) while for Harrison it is ‘Palmer’s most ambitious work before his journey to Italy [and] also one of his most enigmatic’ (Harrison in William Vaughan, Colin Harrison and Elizabeth. E. Barker 2005-6, p.160).

The picture has more obvious claims to being an exhibition piece than almost anything painted by Palmer to date, but whether it was indeed exhibited, in 1833 or another year, has not been confirmed. Palmer’s titles were not always very descriptive and the fact that some works remain untraced has further hampered identification of exhibited works. If however Palmer did not show it, this might indicate that he thought the completed result of what was clearly an experiment was somehow unsatisfactory. While the landscape background is one of the loveliest of his Shoreham idylls and technically the work is a tour de force carrying Palmer’s brilliant colouring and combination of jewel-like stippling and cross-hatching to new heights, the figures and still life are highly distinctive, as noted in Part 1.

The Kentish setting gives the picture local importance but Palmer’s position as a Romantic artist and the special significance of his Shoreham period in his lifetime and afterwards ensures that it has national standing too. Arguably, this is the climactic work of the Shoreham period and it deserves to be seen in a suitable context. Works most closely related have been noted in Part 1. Of British public collections, the Ashmolean Museum is richest in work of Palmer’s Shoreham period and in associated holdings including the correspondence of A.H. Palmer and F.L. Griggs, the latter an artist and etcher of the post-Romantic circle influenced by Palmer in the early twentieth century. I am aware that the Ashmolean takes a strong interest in The Shearers but also that the extremely high value set on the work in recent years has made it difficult for British collections to pursue it as actively as they would wish.

Name of Expert Adviser and Institution:

David Blayney Brown

Curator of 18th and 19th century British Art, Tate Collection, Tate Britain

Date: 16 November 2009