In Cusop Dingle, Hay-On-Wye

In the 1820s Samuel Palmer lived in Kent, where youthful religious fervor inspired bold drawings that ecstatically celebrate the connection between humans and nature. By the mid-1830s, however, he began seeking a new direction and spent the summers traveling west, with excursions along the border between England and Wales. Palmer sensitively depicted sites in rugged, wooded valleys, using a muted palette to render nature truthfully, with an entirely different character than his early work. He often drew outdoors on a medium-gray paper, which evokes the cool, enveloping atmosphere of the woods, adding flints of sunlight daubed in white. A few months after making the present study, Palmer left for Italy, where the Mediterranean light would transform his style yet again.