ONE summer’s day in 1824, the 19-year-old Samuel Palmer put his sketchbook in his pocket and walked to a place that haunted his dreams so much he came to call it his ‘Gate into the World of Vision’. What landscape could live up to his description—the Cumbrian fells, perhaps? Or the rugged scenery of the Peak? No, what entranced Palmer were the fields around the village of Dulwich, which he could reach on foot from London, and when he sat down to draw it was in front of unspectacular farmland. That particular day, the heaps of reaped corn lying in lines up and down the field caught his eye; he drew them twice on the same page, entranced by the patterns they made.
Within two years, he had moved to the small village of Shoreham deep in the heart of Kent, where he sketched ploughmen and shepherds, cornstooks and sheep-shearing, mossy-roofed byres and flowering apple trees. The natural forms he drew and painted are exaggerated, almost hallucinatory: each ear of wheat bulges happily, every farmer’s field looks ready to burst with joy. Coming afresh to the body of work he created during these years, anyone would think that South-East England of the 1820s was an earthly paradise of fecund harvests and contented farm labourers. In reality, it was a place of simmering resentment about terrible working conditions and agricultural mechanisation that was shortly to boil over into the Swing Riots.
Denne historien er fra October 13, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra October 13, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds