Christmas - Folding the Last Sheep. by Samuel Palmer, 1805-1881

Samuel Palmer, 1805-1881
Scroll down for information.
Click here to return to the list.

Christmas - Folding the Last Sheep.

Original etching in black ink. 1850. Signed in the plate. From the first issued edition, printed under the supervision of A.H.Palmer, the artist's son, and published for: Samuel Palmer, A Memoir, by A.H.Palmer 1882.
Ref: Lister 4, iv of v, with the title as first issued, before the 'Trio' reprint.

Excellent sparkling impression with rich inking. On stiff pale cream laid paper. Excellent condition. Full margins. Sheet: 11 3/8 x 8 3/8ins. Plate: 4 7/8 x 4ins (124x102mm).

This item is sold.
Click here to enquire about this item.

Samuel Palmer was one of the great British visionary artists of the nineteenth century. In 1824, through his friendship with the painter and patron John Lirmell (see Midday - Sheep at Noon), he was introduced to William Blake (see Then Went Satan Forth from the Presence of the Lord ... The Book of Job no 5.and Job's Comforters - And When They Lifted up Their Eyes...The Book of Job No 7). It was a crucial moment in his life for it allowed him to crystallize in his mind the quality of an ecstatic pastoral vision which was to be the central inspiration of his art. In looking at Blake's art he found what he called 'such a mystic and dreamy glimmer as penetrates and kindles the imnost soul'. When, with his friends, he went, shortly afterwards, to live at the village of Shoreham in Kent it was to seek this quality in a Virgillan interpretation of the richness and fecundity of the pastoral life.

Palmer and his friends - Calvert, Richmond and Linnell - called themselves The Ancients. When Palmer discovered etching as a medium in the 1850's he found that through the intense pattern of light and shade which the contrasts of ink and paper create he could recapture the visionary brilliance of the ideas of The Ancients in the 1830's. Working first on small-scale compositions, and then in a slightly larger landscape format Palmer created a body of etching which was to mark a pinnacle of nineteenth century English landscape printmaking.

One of Palmer's most famous etchings of his first period in 1850 is Christmas - Folding the Last Sheep. In the intricate latticework pattern of cross-hatched lines, and in the minute pinpoints of sparkling light created by the contrasts of ink and
paper, he evoked again the vision of Virgillan pastoral peace and splendour, which is the essence of his inspiration. It marks a key moment in the whole history of English landscape art.