Dark of the sun

Samuel Palmer painted golden landscapes that seem pickled in honey, but his visionary work met with mockery and only found recognition long after his death, as Maev Kennedy discovers

PINK blossoms explode on a tree, a hillside dissolves into autumn gold, a shepherd and his sheep lie safe in the crook of a hill and gleaners still toil at the end of a long harvest day, stars already blazing above them. These dazzling pictures now adorn a smart pub in a pretty Kent village, but patrons of the Samuel Palmer in Shoreham might be surprised if its artist namesake shuffled in, a stocky figure in thick, scratched spectacles, a wide-brimmed straw hat and a huge shabby coat with enormous pockets, possibly singing hymns or reciting lines from Milton at the top of his voice. ‘The treasury of stored images would last him the rest of his life’ He didn’t always look like that. The earliest-known image of Samuel Palmer, the 220th…

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Country Life (Digital) - 1 Issue, January 22, 2025

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