A Woodland Study
c. 1856
Medium
Brush and black and brown washes, with white gouache and scraping, ruled in graphite, on ivory paperboard
Dimensions
22.5 × 17.2 cm (8 7/8 × 6 13/16 in.)
Classification
prints and drawing
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
198867
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
An English Romantic painter who was best known for his visionary landscapes, Palmer may have created this monochromatic watercolor as a preparatory study for a print. It can be related to 13 delicate etchings made by the artist in the early 1850s. The watercolor was created with graphite underdrawing, over which several brown and black washes were laid down and then heightened by opaque white paint. To emphasize the contrast between light and dark, Palmer scraped pigment off the drawing as the f...
About the Artist
Samuel Palmer · 1805–1881
Samuel Palmer was born on 27 January 1805 in Newington, London, the son of a bookseller and sometime Baptist minister. He had little formal schooling and almost no conventional artistic training, yet he possessed an instinctive gift for drawing that led him to exhibit Turner-inspired works at the Royal Academy when he was only fourteen years old. In 1824 his mentor, the painter John Linnell, intro...