Samuel Palmer. 1805-1881.
The Bellman. Completed 1879. Etching. Lister 11 between ii and iii. Image 6 9/16 x 9 3/16; plate 7 9/16 x 9 7/8; sheet 11 3/4 x 13 1/2. Illustrated: Print Collector's Quarterly 3 (1913): 228; Guichard, British Etchers: 1850-1940. Printed on chine, mounted on sturdy wove paper. A unique touched working proof printed on chine applied to white wove paper. Price upon request.
Plate.
Complete sheet.
Pencil annotations top center margin: 'sky' and two arrows pointing downwards.
Lower left-hand margin: 'Working too'.
Lower right-hand margin: '[ A.H Palmer, Private Pres[s]. not flattened.' A.H. Palmer printed the working proofs on his press at Furze Hill.
The moon, touched with watercolor.
The sky over the hills is touched with Chinese white watercolor, 1/2-inch above the hills, 1-inch long, to the left of the etched 'NO 3' in the sky, above the middle peak of the hill, and to the left of the 'NO 3'.
The etched annotation appears to be unique. It could refer to the third biting of the plate.
Text, lower right-hand corner of the image, as described in Lister's state iii.
A 3/8-inch strip along the lower sheet edge was cut and reattached.
In the center of the image on the verso is a large 'x'.
Lister, who considers The Bellman to be one of Palmer's two greatest plates, quotes A.H. Palmer that the plate received thriteen bitings, with much stopping out between them. 'After the first biting, the needle work was nearly doubled, and more was added after the second, third and seventh. The plate was proved by me at our press and was finished without catastrophe."(page 86).
Lister writes, "In 'The Bellman' we again have a village in a valley. This time it really is Shoreham, though its surrounding countryside is imaginative. 'It is,' wrote Palmer to Hamerton on 4 August 1879, 'a breaking out of village-fever long after contact - a dream of that genuine village where I mused away some of my best years, designing what nobody would care for, and contracting, among good books, a fastidious and unpopular taste. I had no room in my Bellman for that translucent current, rich with trout, a river not unknown to song; nor for the so-called 'idiot' on the bridge with whom I always chatted - like to like perhaps. But there were all the villge appurtenances - the wise-woman behind the age, still resorted to; the shoemaker always before it, such virtue is in the smell of leather' the rumbling mill, and haunted mansion in a shadowy paddock, where sceptics had seen more than they could account for; the vicarage with its learned traditions; and Wordsworth brought to memory every three hours by
"-the crazy old church clock
And the bewilder'd chimes."
Byron would have stuffed his ears with cotton had he been forced to live there.
Just entering this village with its twinkling lights, walks the bellman ringing his bell. A couple sitting in a bower at the left glance at him as he passes, and at the right cattle are lying, among them a young calf. Behind the houses at the left is a horse-chestnut in blossom, and in the distance rise tor-like hills. The moon, a great disc, is ascending over them among cirrus clouds." (page 86).
Palmer planned a series of etchings illustrating Milton's shorter poens, but only The Bellman and The Lonely Tower were made, both illustrating the same passage from Il Penseroso:
Or the Belmans drousie charm,
To bless the dores from nightly harm:
Or let my Lamp at midnight hour,
Be seen in some high lonely Towr
Where I may oft out-watch the Bear,
With thrice-great Hermes...
They were based on large watercolors commissioned by Palmer's patron, Leonard Rowe Valpy, who was also Ruskin's lawyer.
Additional Information about the Print
The collector Leonard Rowe Valpy (Ruskin's solicitor), who became acquainted with Palmer in 1863 when he bought one of the artist's works in the Winter exhibition of the Old Water-Colour Society, was responsible for the commission that would occupy the artist for the rest of his life. Valpy left the choice of theme to Palmer, specifying only something that chimed with the artist's "inner sympathis".
In 1864 he agreed to Palmer's suggestion of a series of watercolours to illustrate Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. Palmer exhibited three of the eventual series of eight finished watercolours at the Old Water-Colour Society in 1868, including I The remaining five appeared intermittently, between 1870 and 1881. The Bellman was only exhibited in 1882, after Palmer's death, because he had not considered it quite finished. It was while carrying out small preparatory watercolours for the intended full scale paintings that as early as 1864 Palmer was considering a related series of etchings. He wrote to Valpy in October that year
The Etching dream came over me in this way. I am making my working sketches a quarter of the size of the drawings, and was surprised and not displeased to notice the variety - the difference of each from all the rest. I saw within a set of highly-finished etchings the size of Turner's Liber Studiorum; and as finished as my moonlight with the cypresses; a set making a book - a compact block of work which I would fain hope might live when I am with the fallen leaves.
However, it was not till 1879, that Palmer turned to etching the Milton subjects, of which only two plates were achieved, The Bellman, published by the Fine Art Society that year and The Lonely Tower which appeared in the Etching Club's Twenty-one Etchings in 1880, a final contribution to a Club publication in the penultimate year of his life.
The Bellman, etched before the full scale watercolour was completed, is close to the preparatory watercolour sketch (now in the Bernard Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford) and relates to lines referring to the close of day from Milton's Il Penseroso Or the bellman's drousie charm To bless the dores from nightly harm
The Bellman is literally a return to the Shoreham period, for the village depicted is based on memories of the real Shoreham, though set in a mountainous landscape recalled from travels in Italy, Devon or Wales. Palmer wrote to Hamerton on the 4 August 1879: "I am very glad that you like my Bellman. . . . It is a breaking out of village-fever long after contact - a dream of that genuine village where I mused away some of my best years."
To order, to report broken links or to be placed on the email list, please contact Jane Allinson (jane@allinsongallery.com), call (001) 860 429 2322 or fax (001) 860 429 2825. Business hours are 9:A.M. to 5 P.M. Eastern Standard Time.
Please click here to review the USE AND ACCEPTANCE AND PRIVACY POLICIES FOR THE ALLINSON GALLERY, INC. WEBSITE
Thank you for visiting this website.