Anyone who makes it to NY might want to get to the Met Museum and
leave plenty of time after the Rauschenberg exhibit to check out a
major show of Samuel Palmer's work. Palmer became a friend of Blake's
three years before the latter's death, and his work shows some of
Blake's influence, but that's the least of it. His small watercolors
and oils, his etchings, and his astonishing drawings pack tremendous
power into very small amounts of space. His work anticipates
Barbizon, Pre-Raphaelites and Post-Impressionism, but forget art
history: the work is sui generis.
Mark
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