The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of May 31, 2023

The Skylark

1850

Samuel Palmer

(British, 1805–1881)

England, 19th century

Etching

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Lewis B. Williams, presented in honor of Henry Sayles Francis, Curator of Prints 1966.181

Catalogue raisonné: Lister 2

State: VI/VIII

Location

not on view

Description

Palmer came to printmaking relatively late in his career in 1850 when he was elected to the Etching Club in London. He created a significant number of landscape etchings, intricate in detail and sonorous in chiaroscuro. In The Skylark, one of Palmer’s earliest compositions, a solitary figure in a rural landscape contemplates the flight of a songbird. Palmer has been compared to the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich (also in this exhibition), who produced images infused with a similarly indefinable atmosphere of calm, mystery, and breathless silence.

Exhibition history

Cleveland, Ohio: The Cleveland Museum of Art; 8/15/04-11/14/04. "Nature Sublime: Landscapes from the 19th Century". No exhibition catalogue.

Samuel Palmer Etchings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 29-June 6, 1967).

The Birth and Flowering of British Romantic Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 1-July 22, 1990).

Nature Sublime: Landscapes from the 19th Century. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 15-November 14, 2004).

Source URL: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1966.181