Palmer, Samuel (1805 – 1881) – Eventide.

This watercolour is a fine example of the work Palmer was making in the 1850s and 60s. It is in perfect original condition, making all aspects of the picture, from the distant shipping, to the light on the hills in the middle-distance, to the textured foliage in the foreground legible and in register. Scott Wilcox has perfectly summed up Palmer's work of this period as attempting '[...] to unite the probing and restless naturalism, to which Ruskin responded, with the great compositional and poetic truths embodied in the classical tradition'. The f igure of the shepherd here is very close in pose to the figure in Palmer's famous 'Sleeping Shepherd' print (1857) and its related watercolour (1854). The figure was probably based on a Roman sculpture of Endymion in the British Museum.