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Charles West Cope, 'Portrait of Samuel Palmer', 1884

 


Charles West Cope's memorialisation of fellow painter Samuel Palmer, who died three years before this work was produced, is a small yet thoughtful etching which pulls a viewer closer. Palmer is aged and stooped, almost swaddled in layers of clothing, and leaning on the back of a chair as if to support himself, yet his gaze remains captivating and knowing.

It is an interesting choice by Cope to choose the medium of etching to honour Palmer, and perhaps an oil of the same subject did at one point exist, as this was his favoured material. Training at the Royal Academy and travelling to Paris in the 1830s to expand his artistic knowledge, Cope built a career initially upon copying Old Masters which he then sold, before he created his own painted representations of historical scenes and looked to imagery centred on rural life for further inspiration. Often, he drew on the minute detail and vivid colouration found in the Pre-Raphaelite mode of working: his The Thorn of 1866, for example, which depicts two small children wrapped together, one with a pin in her hand helping the other to remove the titular cause of pain, is surely inspired by Millais. However, Cope's portrait of Palmer proves his skill in printmaking, commemorating the artist-sitter in monochrome. Palmer is without the tools of his trade or implication of his skill surrounding him, but instead illustrated as an ordinary, ageing man for the viewer to personally connect to. 

From the swiftness of execution on the jacket of the sitter, to the in-depth shadowing on the hands and face to suggest age and weathering to the skin, Cope shows off his technical range. Both cross-hatching and thin, single lines close together and far apart have been utilised, as Cope conveys the different textures of clothing, the thinning, wispy hair of Palmer, and the grooves in the chair that he leans against. Palmer's gaze remains captivating and unblinking with deep, dark, inquisitive eyes, made all the more pertinent both by the slight tilt of his large head and the dark eyebrows arched above his eyes. His cheeks are hollowed, eyes sunken, and Cope gives the slightest suggestion of a vein peeling away from the top of the nose, towards the stippled marks at the back of the head. With his hands clasped in front of him, a gesture perhaps of thought and contemplation, coupled with the leaning pose, it is as if Palmer does indeed what to converse with an onlooker. Although his body remains tightly enclosed within the frame, there is a sense of connection and communication with the outside world that makes this small print particularly intimate and engaging. 

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