Samuel Palmer, R.W.S. (London 1805-1881 Surrey)

In the summer of 1838, during his Italian honeymoon, Samuel and Hannah Palmer stayed at a small inn at Corpo di Cava, overlooking a ravine and a Benedictine monastery. Combining the poetry and mysticism of the Shoreham period with a new Italianate sense of composition and structure, Palmer produced some of his finest watercolours during this happy period. Here, as he told George Richmond, he believed himself to be 'no longer a mere maker of sketches, but an artist' (E. Malins Samuel Palmer's Italian Honeymoon, 1968, p. 73).

Another watercolour of similar dimensions, of the same scene from a different viewpoint, is in the collection of the Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield (R. Lister, Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of Samuel Palmer , 1988, no. 311, pp. 126-27, illustrated) and another dated 1844 was last recorded in 1961 (op.cit., no. 392, pp. 144-45 illustrated). As if to echo the lessons he was learning from Italian art, Palmer has not only constructed this watercolour along classical lines (with a receding serpentine path and a figure to show the way) but he has touched the surface with gold.