Corners of Paradise: William Blake, Samuel Palmer & 'the Ancients'

Samuel Palmer, 'In a Shoreham Garden', 1829. Museum no. P.32-1926

The visionary poet -painter, William Blake expressed his esoteric beliefs in powerful imagery derived from the Bible, Milton and Dante. He worked tirelessly and published many of his own 'prophetic books', but his wayward genius met with little success in the fiercely competitive London art-world.

These visionary works of the 1820s were forgotten until the 1890s, when artists and connoisseurs became excited by the prints of the Ancients. Later still, from the 1920s, Palmer's early landscape drawings became the crucial influence for English Neo-Romantics.

In 1824, Blake, then sixty-seven, poor and neglected, was discovered by a group of young, idealistic artists. Samuel Palmer, Edward Calvert and George Richmond despised the pomposity of modern art and claimed affinity with the classical world.

Calling themselves 'the Ancients', they sought to live close to nature and to paint and draw in a state of poetic rapture. They were inspired particularly by Blake's illustrations to Virgil's Eclogues. Palmer described these tiny woodcuts as 'little dells, and nooks, and corners of Paradise; models of the exquisitest pitch of intense poetry'.

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Edward Calvert, 'The Flood '

Edward Calvert (1799-1883)
'The Flood'
1829
Lithograph; only state; signed
Museum no. CIRC.1297-1926
Given by Miss Emma Calvert

Calvert mastered the process of lithography at a time that it was still a relatively novel technique for serious artists. Using the pen-lithography method - whereby the artist draws directly onto the printing stone using oily lithographic ink - he achieved results very similar, in their clear linear qualities, to his other prints.

Samuel Palmer, 'The Lonely Tower'

Samuel Palmer (1805-81)
'The Lonely Tower'
1879
Etching; 4th state, signed
Inscribed by the artist's son, 'A.H.P. Private Press Trial Proof'
Museum no. E.1895-1919
Given by A.H. Palmer, Esq., the son of the artist

Palmer took meticulous care in the etching of his designs. He took each plate through many stages before reaching the desired result and installed an etching press in his house to check the progress of his work. His son, A.H. Palmer, became an expert printer and helped his father to realise the extraordinary subtle effects at which he aimed.

Edward Calvert, 'Ideal Pastoral Life'

Edward Calvert (1799-1883)
'Ideal Pastoral Life'
1829
Lithograph; only state; signed
Museum no. E.516-1926

The second of Calvert's two lithographs evokes the bucolic delights of Virgil's Pastorals. But in the crisply drawn trees, the dark rounded hills and the crescent moon, he comes closest to both the mood and detail of Palmer's Shoreham drawings. In his personal pursuit of the classical ideal, Calvert later set up an altar to the god Pan in his garden.

Edward Calvert, 'The Lady with the Rooks'

Edward Calvert (1799-1883)
'The Lady with the Rooks'
1829
Wood engraving; 3rd state
Impression from the portfolio 'The Early Engravings of Edward Calvert', published by the Carfax Gallery, London, 1904
Museum no. E.513-1926

Of all Calvert's prints, the atmosphere suggested by 'The Lady with the Rooks' comes closest to the contemporary literary taste for romanticised medieval subjects. The ancient tower, the limp damsel and the sombre mood conjured by the black rooks silhouetted against the fading light were stock features of popular gothic novels.

Aubrey Beardsley, 'The Abbé'

Aubrey Beardsley (1872-98)
'The Abbé'
1896
Pen and ink, over faint traces of pencil
Illustration to the artist's unfinished novel, 'Under the Hill'; first published in 'The Savoy', no.1, January 1896
Museum no. E.305-1972
Purchased from the collection of Ralph Harari, with the assistance of the National Art Collections Fund 1896

In 1895 Beardsley abandoned the decadent style that he had used in the 'Yellow Book' in favour of a style reminiscent of old engravings. He borrowed from his friend Robert Ross a copy of the 1893 'Memoir of Edward Calvert' and it seems that the luxurious vegetation of Calvert's prints influenced Beardsley's drawing of decorative foliage.

Samuel Palmer, 'Ruth Returning from Gleaning'

Samuel Palmer (1805-81)
'Ruth Returning from Gleaning'
About 1828
Pencil, pen and ink, chalk and wash heightened with bodycolour
Museum no. E.3449-1923
Given by A.H. Palmer, the son of the artist

Palmer left London to live and work more simply at Shoreham in Kent, planning to illustrate the biblical story of Ruth. Nearly all the works he made, however, were intimate landscapes, peopled with tiny figures. This grandly conceived drawing is dominated by the powerful figure of Ruth the Gleaner, symbolising the fecundity of the land. Blake's influence is apparent in the robust figure-type and dynamic composition.

William Blake, 'Satan Calling up his Legions' about 1804. Museum no. P.8-1950

William Blake (1757-1827)
'Satan Calling up his Legions'
About 1804
Tempera on canvas
Illustration to Milton's 'Paradise Lost', Book 1
Museum no. P.8-1950

Blake's antipathy to the standard methods of oil painting led him to use tempera, in which pigments are mixed with egg or animal glue. Unfortunately, most of his tempera pictures have darkened disastrously. This illustration to 'Paradise Lost'  was owned for many years by Samuel Palmer, who shared Blake's unbounded enthusiasm for Milton's poetry.

Samuel Palmer, page from a sketchbook

Samuel Palmer (1805-81)
Page from a sketchbook
1824-5
Pen and brown ink
Museum no. E.3514-1928
Given by A.H. Palmer, Esq., the son of the artist

Palmer filled the early leaves of the sketchbook with fanciful landscapes drawn during his wanderings in the countryside around Dulwich, close to his home in Walworth. Some details he took from nature but others come from paintings and prints. Here the palm-like tree on the left derives from a similar exotic motif in a Dürer woodcut, 'The Flight into Egypt'.

Edward Calvert, 'The Bride'

Edward Calvert (1799-1883)
'The Bride'
1828
Engraving; signed
Impression from the portfolio 'The Early Engravings of Edward Calvert', published by the Carfax Gallery, London, 1904
Museum no. E.507-1926

Blake, after a lifetime of work as a engraver in the old trade tradition, never commanded the effortless facility with the burin that Calvert achieved in 'The Bride'. The figure of the bride, which Calvert may have taken from a classical gemstone, together with the luscious landscape setting, suggest the rich eroticism of the biblical 'Song of Solomon'.