<iframe src="//www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-K3L4M3" height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden">

Books

Samuel Palmer: from long-haired mystic to High Church Tory

William Vaughan’s biography shows how the idealistic painter of Arcadia became an established artist with a strong commercial sense

21 November 2015

9:00 AM

21 November 2015

9:00 AM

Samuel Palmer: Shadows on the Wall William Vaughan

Yale, pp.412, £50, ISBN: 9780300209853

In his youth, Samuel Palmer (1805–1881) painted like a Romantic poet. The moonlit field of ‘The Harvest Moon’ (1831–32) glows with uncanny significance; for Palmer, as for Tolstoy’s Lieven, the bowed forms of the peasants at the harvest are shadows of divinity. Palmer aged like a Romantic poet too. The long-haired mystic became a High Church Tory: like Coleridge, but without the drinking.

Already a subscriber? Log in

As the US decides, so can you

Subscribe today and get a $50 Amazon gift card if you correctly predict the next US president.

  • Unlimited access to spectator.com.au
  • The weekly edition on the Spectator Australia app
  • Spectator podcasts and newsletters
  • Full access to spectator.co.uk
Or

Unlock this article

REGISTER

Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £42.50 Tel: 08430 600033

You might disagree with half of it, but you’ll enjoy reading all of it. Try your first month for free, then just $2 a week for the remainder of your first year.


Comments

As the US decides, so can you

Subscribe today and get a $50 Amazon gift card if you correctly predict the next US president.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Close