1805 -1881 · English romanticism and visionary landscape

Luminous orchards, deep moons and fertile countryside give Samuel Palmer's landscapes the intensity of a poetic and spiritual vision.

Samuel Palmer was born in London in 1805 and died in Redhill in 1881. Early, he exhibited at the Royal Academy as a teenager and soon discovered the work of William Blake, whose imaginative freedom became decisive. From 1826, he settled in Shoreham, Kent, and worked with the circle of Ancients. The fields, trees, shepherds, harvests and bell towers of this period not only described the countryside: they transformed it into a closed, abundant and almost sacred world. The magical apple tree belongs to this imagination. The gnarled trunk occupies space as a living presence, while the light brings together foliage, fruit and depth in a single vision. Palmer then uses the drawing, ink, watercolor, tempera and sometimes oil with great freedom. After Shoreham's years, his style became more naturalistic and responded more to the landscape market. His honeymoon in Italy from 1837 to 1839 expanded his repertoire of valleys, architecture and Mediterranean lights. He also developed an important work as an engraver, particularly around Virgil's Eglogues. Long less admired than his youthful landscapes, his late works nevertheless retain the same ambition: to make the visible world the threshold of an interior experience. Rediscovered in the 20th century, Palmer is now one of the great figures of British romanticism. There selection "Samuel Palmer" notably compares The Magic Apple Tree. His reading favors figures.

Palmer does not paint an ordinary orchard: he makes each branch, moon and harvest the sign of an inner nature.