Samuel Palmer. Samuel Palmer was a British landscape painter, etcher and printmaker.
   He was also a prolific writer. Palmer was a key figure in Romanticism in Britain and produced visionary pastoral paintings.
   Palmer, who was born in Surrey Square off the Old Kent Road in Newington, London, was the son of a bookseller and sometime Baptist minister, and was raised by a pious nurse. Palmer painted churches from around age twelve, and first exhibited Turner-inspired works at the Royal Academy at the age of fourteen.
   He had little formal training, and little formal schooling, although he was educated briefly at Merchant Taylors' School. Through John Linnell, he met William Blake in 1824.
   Blake's influence can be seen in work he produced over the next ten years and generally reckoned to be his greatest. The works were landscapes around Shoreham, near Sevenoaks in the west of Kent. He purchased a run-down cottage, nicknamed Rat Abbey, and lived there from 1826 to 1835, depicting the area as a demi-paradise, mysterious and visionary, often shown in sepia shades under moon and star light. There Palmer associated with a group of Blake-influenced artists known as the Ancients. They were among the few who saw the Shoreham paintings as, resulting from attacks by critics in 1825, he opened his early portfolios only to selected friends. Palmer's somewhat disreputable father & Samuel Palmer senior moved to t
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