The Prospect by Samuel Palmer, 1881. Courtesy The Ashmolean Museum.

The Ashmolean Museum has achieved its aim of acquiring a great Romantic landscape painting in the bicentenary year of its artist, Samuel Palmer (1805 – 1881), following a public appeal for funds.

The Prospect has been bought at the modest price of £245,000, thanks to generous support from the National Art Collections Fund (Art Fund), the National Heritage Memorial Fund, other bodies and public donations. The acquisition was announced at the Ashmolean on October 13, 2005.

“We are, of course, absolutely overjoyed,” said Colin Harrison, Assistant Keeper of Western Art at the Ashmolean. “It is in immaculate condition. The conservator looked at it and said ‘Gosh!’ – it really is in phenomenally good condition.”

The painting depicts a beautiful pastoral scene, with a rural English-style foreground and a sunny bay redolent of Naples in the background. The imaginary scene is one of eight in a series Palmer undertook to illustrate Milton’s two lyric poems L’Allegro and Il Penseroso.

It is the only major watercolour from the Milton series that is now on public display in Britain – three others are on show overseas.

The series occupied the last 13 years of Palmer’s life, with the final painting being completed on his deathbed. His later work has never been as fashionable as his early paintings and drawings, which is largely why the Ashmolean’s Palmer collection has until now lacked any watercolours from after 1849. Despite this gap, it is the most important collection of Palmer’s work in the world.

Self-Portrait by Samuel Palmer, C1824. Black chalk heightened with white on buff paper. Courtesy The Ashmolean Museum.

Colin explained that it was an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1926, featuring Palmer’s early work, that “set the tone for his modern reputation”. It was in the next 15 years that the Ashmolean acquired most of its Palmer collection.

“The first ten years became the benchmark by which his work was judged,” said Colin. “It’s only recently that his later work has been appreciated – it’s not so immediately appealing, and people don’t take the time to look.”

“It’s easy to be original at 20, but not so at 70,” he continued. “It will be interesting to see the reviews of the British Museum exhibition.”

The Prospect will be on show at the British Museum’s major retrospective, Samuel Palmer: Vision and Ladscape, from October 21 to January 22 2006, along with other works from the Ashmolean’s Palmer collection. These include a haunting self-portrait and six sepia drawings from 1825 that exemplify the ‘visionary landscape’.

Palmer was at the centre of the ‘Ancients’ group – followers of William Blake, who spent time in the idyllic village of Shoreham in Kent where he owned a house. The Shoreham period is well represented in the Ashmolean collection, so the addition of The Prospect is a welcome illustration of the later years of Palmer’s life and work.

The Ashmolean is to undergo a £50 million redevelopment, £15 million of which has recently been secured from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum.

The painting represents lines 69-80 of L’Allegro, which mentions russet lawns, nibbling flocks, mountains, towers and battlements. All feature in the artwork, whose combination of English and Italian elements (the grazing sheep; the shimmering castle on the hilltop) epitomises Palmer’s romantic ethos. The paintings were conceived as pairs, illustrating different times of day in the two poems, but it is not known for sure which is the partner to The Prospect – it could be The Eastern Gate, Colin told the 24 Hour Museum.

The fundraising campaign was very successful. “I’ve been here 12 years,” said Colin, “and we’ve never had a public appeal like this … over 300 people have responded – including a lot of normal people like you and I, who have given £10 or £25. That was very gratifying indeed.”

The Art Fund awarded £75,000 towards the purchase, the National Heritage Memorial Fund £45,000 and the MLA /V&A purchase grant fund £35,000.

Vision and Landscape will go on to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the works will return to the Ashmolean in the summer of 2006. The Prospect will then reside in the museum’s Print Room, where works of art on paper that are susceptible to damage from light are kept.

The room is open to the public without appointments or academic credentials, but Colin informed the 24 HM that The Prospect and Palmer’s sepia drawings would be prime candidates for one of the new galleries being built at the Ashmolean for works on paper.