Samuel Palmer
Christmas (or Folding the Last Sheep), 1850
Etching
12.3 x 10.3 cm
4 7/8 x 4 1/8 in
4 7/8 x 4 1/8 in
First published state, as issued 1882 by A H Palmer in Samuel Palmer
Stamped with Pissarro’s initials (Lugt 613e)
The theme is from a sonnet by John Codrington Bampfield (1754-96). The Etching Club had proposed in 1849 that their next project for publication would be “illustrations of twenty miscellaneous...
The theme is from a sonnet by John Codrington Bampfield (1754-96). The Etching Club had proposed in 1849 that their next project for publication would be “illustrations of twenty miscellaneous Sonnets”. "Christmas" was one of four Palmer etchings produced in 1850 for the Sonnets, but that project did not go ahead, being superseded, so that only "The Skylark" of Palmer’s four 1850 plates was ever published in his lifetime.