A new title in the Lives of the Artists series, which offers personal, revealing accounts of prominent artists as viewed by their contemporaries--and themselves.

Samuel Palmer (1805-1881) was one of the leading British landscape painters of the nineteenth century. Inspired by his mentor, the artist and poet William Blake, Palmer brought a new spiritual intensity to his romantic depictions of nature. A Memoir of Samuel Palmer contains the first biography of the artist, written by his son A. H. Palmer; a critical appreciation of Palmer by the Pre-Raphaelite artist and critic F. G. Stephens, which provides a deeply personal look at the painter as well as insight into the reception of his art during the Victorian era; and an autobiographical letter by Palmer himself.
About the Author: A. H. Palmer was the son of Samuel Palmer and wrote the first biography of the artist. He also wrote a book about the nineteenth-century German artist James Wolf, who was known for his naturalistic animal paintings.

F. G. Stephens was a British artist and art critic, and one of the seven original members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Disappointed in his own artwork, he dedicated himself to writing. He became the art critic and later the art editor of the Athenaeum from 1860-1901, while also writing freelance for art history periodicals including The Art Journal, the pro-Pre-Raphaelite journal The Crayon, and the Brotherhood's own magazine, The Germ. Stephen's first work of art history, Normandy: Its Gothic Architecture and History, was published in 1865, and Flemish Relics, a history of Netherlandish art, appeared in 1866. In 1873 he started writing a series of articles on British collecting for the Athenaeum, which encouraged middle-class art patronage and the growing Victorian interest in contemporary art. Stephens was also Keeper of the Prints and Drawings in the British Museum and wrote many entries in the first volumes of the Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum.

William Vaughan (author of introduction) is professor emeritus of art history at Birkbeck College, London. He organized the groundbreaking Palmer retrospective at the British Museum and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2005. He is also the author of Samuel Palmer: Shadows on the Wall (Paul Mellon Centre, 2015).