Palmer, Samuel (1805–81). English landscape painter and etcher. The son of a nonconformist bookseller, Palmer's was a learned and religious childhood. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy at 14 and through the painter John Linnell (later his father-in-law) met William Blake. In Blake's work, Palmer saw the means to express his own mystical tendencies and he became the most outstanding of Blake's followers. In 1826 Palmer moved to Shoreham (Kent). During his seven years there he produced his most exciting and visionary work (In a Shoreham Garden, The Magic Apple Tree). Following his return to London he married, then spent two years in Italy. From that point, what he described as his ‘primitive and infantine feeling’ faded and his work became more conventional. Examples of his painting may be seen in London at the Tate and Victoria and Albert Museum; in Oxford, Cambridge, and Manchester.

June Cochrane

Palmer, Samuel (1805–81) English Romantic landscape painter and graphic artist, the most important follower of William Blake. He enjoyed his most productive period at Shoreham, Kent (1826–35), where he was the focal point for a group of artists called ‘the Ancients’.