A young man shall draw visions

books:


	• Samuel Palmer: The Sketchbook of 1824, New Edition Thames & Hudson, 2007 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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A young man shall draw visions

This facsimile of Samuel Palmer's only surviving sketchbook (all others were sadly destroyed by his son after the artist's death) is a thing of beauty indeed. Palmer was all of 19 when he filled its pages with rough sketches, fine drawings, and the occasional poem. Any aspiring artist will recognize the struggle to hone & focus an obvious talent still in need of development. But even the non-artist will enjoy lingering over each page, watching as Palmer imitates his influences & begins to discover his own style.

First among those influences, of course, is his mentor, William Blake. Close relations of the great artist's sinuous, larger-than-life figures emerge on several pages here. But Palmer's own pastoral but mystic tone is already taking shape: more modest in scale, with a luminous & unearthly stillness quite unlike Blake's ferocious & immense figures astride the cosmos. There's also a close attention to & clear love for the details of Nature, also foreign to Blake except as potent symbol.

These pages are the first budding leaves of Palmer's visionary art. There was much ahead for this gifted young man, both a fully-developed artistic talent & personal disappointment; but this is where it all starts. A reminder to make the most of your gifts, and to pursue your own vision -- highly recommended!

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A facsimile edition of the only surviving sketchbook by this visionary Romantic painter.

Child prodigy Samuel Palmer was just fourteen years old when he first exhibited at London's Royal Academy in 1819. A delicate and withdrawn child, he experienced intense and disturbing visions as a boy, while developing a love of the Bible and poetry that remained a lifelong inspiration for his art. Influenced by William Blake and John Linnell, he became the most visionary and mystical landscape painter of the Romantic era in England.

Previously issued in a special limited edition, this volume reproduces the only sketchbook by Palmer in existence, now at a reduced price. Its pages vividly illustrate the crucial period when Palmer, a nineteen-year-old in the grip of religious fervor, first experienced his revelatory vision of a divinely ordered heaven on Earth located in the landscape of rural Kent. No other source provides such an intimate record of Palmer's artistic and spiritual struggles.

All of the sketchbook's 162 surviving pages are presented in their original sequence and at their actual size. Martin Butlin provides page-by-page commentaries, notes, and an introduction to Palmer's life, while William Vaughan places the sketchbook in the context of the art and aesthetic of its time. 163 color illustrations.

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