As I wandered around the
Tate Britain a few weeks past, I felt as if I were again encountering and reconnecting with what had once been the foundations and fabric of so much that I had loved in art. Looking at the paintings that had so fascinated me all those years ago, I had the impression I was revisiting places or people precious to me. Stepping out of busy 21st century London streets, and into this vast art gallery enabled me to escape from the less savoury aspects of modern life in a realm far removed from the pettiness, paltriness and often plain ugliness of today’s civilized society. There was something soothing and gratifying to be surrounded by the art of centuries past, a reflection of History that gives the present day, our lives and even mortality itself another perspective. Like Nature itself, History just is; and as such is deaf and blind to our perceptions and reactions to rights and wrongs; the good and the bad that punctuate its substance finally seem to highlight the words '
This too shall pass'.
In one of the rooms, a small painting caught my attention with its curious jewel-like quality and tranquil air.
Coming from Evening Church by Samuel Palmer (1805–1881), painted in 1830, somehow seemed to possess a strange essence unlike any other of the works that were familiar to me and were certainly more well-known. Its combination of tempera, chalk, gold, ink and graphite on gesso creates an almost enamel aspect, and the colours both calm yet curiously vibrant, with ocre, reds and dark blue in the clothing of the procession of worshippers winding their away towards us, away from the church. The latter has a bizarre almost childish cone-form nave, that is repeated in several other oddly-shaped buildings, but its spire stands tall, moonlit in the night sky. The whole scene is framed by trees with delicate leaves and branches that are silhouetted against the huge full moon which is set in skies that are pale blue, in contrast to the stark forms of dark green bushes and outlined trees. In the background, strangely steep hills tower up with their undulating forms that pick up the curves and rounded shapes in the valley scene below, and of course the moon itself. The gallery inscription next to the painting cited Palmer himself - describing the work of William Blake (1757–1827) - pointing out that these words could indeed be applied to his own art and vision; “
There is in all such a mystic and dreamy glimmer as penetrates and kindles the inmost soul”. Samuel Palmer was an admirer of Blake’s visionary art, and is known today for his images of rural scenery that were based on an imagined, sensory reality rather than disciplined observations of landscape before him. Born in London in 1805 to a bookseller father and a devout mother, Palmer grew up with literature but had no formal academic artistic training as such, yet at the age of 14, his work was exhibited at the Royal Academy. Despite this achievement, he himself was increasingly inspired by art that seemed to flout a staid, conventional approach and he was influenced in part by work displayed at the British Museum.
Key influence on his early life was his meeting with landscapist John Linnell (1792-1882) in 1822. Linnell not only saved the young artist from “
the pit of modern art” by enabling him to learn from ancient Italian and German masters, but more importantly introduced him to William Blake. Palmer’s vision thus grew from art “as old as time”, with Gothic art and the Northern Renaissance artists such as Van Leyden and Dürer but also Turner and Blake himself. Wishing to experience the same spiritual visions as Blake to fire his art, Palmer earnestly devoted himself to his work, becoming a member of the Ancients, an artistic brotherhood that preferred a more primitive approach to life and art over the slavish, descriptive Classical pieces so favoured by the Royal Academy. He moved to Shoreham, Kent in 1827, where he produced his most other-worldly images of the rural lands that he found more mesmerizing than any other. Drawn to the night skies, moon and stars, he and his fellow Ancients wandered in the dark to capture the nocturnal landscapes. With Palmer dressed in archaic clothing, complete with flowing beard and a Christ-like allure, the group must have made quite an impression on the locals who referred to them as ‘astrologers’!
The seven-year period in Kent were in fact to be his most productive as he was drawn to the mystic, Romantic qualities of nature, seeing the spiritual all around him, transforming the visible through the lens of his heightened imagination. He mourned the demise of the pastoral way of life and the land itself that was being transformed by the Industrial Revolution. Having returned to London, his subsequent marriage to Hannah Linnell (daughter of John) in 1837 marked the beginning of a new stage in his life, and indeed his art… Unable to support his family, Palmer sought to pursue a more conventional approach to his art, and was obliged to pander somewhat to public taste and give private lessons to increase his income. His mature work – often watercolour – was artistically accomplished but never quite captured the same sensory essence as his Shoreham art and Palmer was largely a commercial failure during his lifetime. Much of his work and studies were lost due to their destruction by his son, after Palmer’s death, in the belief that “…
no one would be able to make head or tail of what I burnt; I wished to save it from a more humiliating fate". And so one individual’s decision to whitewash the past deprived the world of a piece of collective history. Hmmm...
