ART.
SAMUEL PALMER'S PAINTINGS.*
WREN a great man dies, be he writer or painter, statesman or scientific writer, we are apt rather to over, than under-rate his achievements, seeking, perhaps, to atone for long-continued neglect by a too tardy justice. But the man who dies after a long life of work in which he has just failed to be great, whose success has always been of that kind which gains ready appreciation within the little circle of friends to whom it is known, but which never touches the world at large—whose genius, in fact, has shown itself in pleasing greatly a few, rather than touching the hearts or affecting the lives of the many—this man is apt, I think, to obtain but scanty justice, directly his powers of pleasing have ceased. And this is, of course, more certainly the case, if he be one whose talents have been somewhat archaic, and if he has never cared to adapt them to the public measure of the useful, the beautiful, or the true. So it is that I venture to dwell a little upon the style of painting, and the habit of mind which that style showed, of the late Mr. Samuel Palmer, one of the oldest members of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours. And first, a very few words about the man himself. He was born in the beginning of the present century, was brought up as a painter from the early age of fourteen, was instructed by Linnell and befriended by Blake, worked mainly in oil up to 1840, soon after which time he joined the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, of which body he continued a member till the date of his death. Without entering into personal details, we may say, without offence, that, as evidenced in his work, there were two ruling motives in the arti-t's mind ; or, perhaps, I should rather say, two media through which he saw Nature and Art. These were his religions and poetical feelings, and, though I put them here as separate influences, they were practically inseparable. "Milton and the Bible," says the deceased artist's son, in the brief memoir of his father's life which he has already published, were the two ruling in- fluences of his life, and much of the massive dignity of the one and the simple solemnity of the other, passed habitually into his work. Does it not seem somewhat of a contradiction to say that any paintings can echo, in form and colour, at one and the same time, the splendid and somewhat involved picturesqueness of Milton, and the straightforward simplicity of the English of the Bible And yet it is certainly true of Mr. Palmer's best work, that both these elements live therein side by side, along with a style which is at once peculiar, gorgeous, and intricate, which rejoices in the most varied harmonies of colour, and which treats the various forms with which it is concerned from an idealistic point of view. We find in Palmer's work a carious naivete, which, like that of the Bible itself, seems some- times almost to verge upon childlikeness. A painter whose habit of mind is evidently one of the most intense earnestness and humility, he, nevertheless, treats and selects his subjects with a daring indifference to the possibility of their adequate repre- sentation, which is of rare occurrence even with Turner himself. I do not think it of much avail to discuss here from whom he gathered the elements of his style, nor to speculate upon his relation to such painters as Barrett and Varley, or to the later manner of Turner. No doubt, he owed much to Claude, and much also to his master Linnell, and it was probably the influence of the latter that gave to his work that element of simplicity and delight in natural things which is evident throughout his paintings. For though he walked with Nature mach after the fashion of Blake—seeing the visible universe only as a veil to the spiritual—he never, like Blake, lost sight of that veil's beauty, nor es-er ceased to try and make it manifest. No doubt, be, too, had visions of angels at every sunrise, and dreamt of Greece and Syria whenever the min set upon English meadows. But in whatever celestial light he saw the grove and stream appareled, he still remembered that it was earth, not Heaven, that he was painting, and men, not spirits, that he was painting for. I do not suppose that I can, at this late day, make a single one of the "all-ill-judging world approve "of these beautiful works, which they have in the main ignored for the sixty years during which they have been continually before their eyes, nor extort from a public that worships Frith and Horsley, a passing glance of admira- tion for the work of a painter who spent the whole of a long life in devotion to the finest form of landscape art. But, per-
* The Fine-Art Society.
haps, in these great days of Art education, when Cardinals. Prime Ministers, and philosophers say such fine things about the moral influence of painting, I may persuade a few thoughtful persons to go for themselves to the little gal- lery in Bond Street, and pay that tribute to Pahner's work that he would have liked best,—a careful examina- tion. Having tried, and tried vainly, to get more public recognition bestowed upon this artist's work while he was alive, I feel keenly the futility of trying to alter a verdict that can no longer affect its object ; and my only hope in writing this brief notice is to assert wain that admiration which I have so fre- quently been ridiculed for bestowing, and to pay what tribute I may to the memory of a painter who never altered his Course to win public recognition, or surrendered his theories in defer- ence to public prejudice. Of the special works of Mr. Palmer, which have been so industriously collected by the Fine-Art Society', I need say little more here than that they form a very typical collection, and include much of his finest work. The magnificent Milton series painted for Mr. Valpy, and still in that gentleman's possession, are all here, and are, perhaps, on the whole, the finest specimens in the exhibition. Anything more magnificent in colour or more daring in conception than the one which is entitled "The Eastern Gate," I have never beheld, except in the very finest work of Turuer ; and even in Turner himself there was a lack of that untroubled belief, that appearance of delight and gladness, which make this drawing so very beautiful. Of the others, the best is probably Mr. Gur- ney's " Tityrus Restored to his Patrimony ;" and the drawing of Rome, entitled " A Golden City," is also extremely fine. Of the many poetical qualities of these works, I hope to speak in another notice, yet life is short, and I must content myself here with a hope, not a certainty ; but our readers have now an opportunity of judging for themselves that should not be
Previous page
