The Skylark

Samuel Palmer

1850 · Etching on chine collé; seventh or eighth state of eight · Drawings and Prints

Samuel Palmer, one of the greatest British etchers, engaged throughout his career with the poetry of John Milton. This pastoral idyll - in which a man accompanied by a dog, pauses at a gate to watch a bird soar into the early-morning sky - relates to a passage in Milton's L'Allegro of 1645 (lines 40-44): "To hear the lark begin his flight/ And singing startle the dull night,/ From his watch-towre in the skies/ Till the dappled dawn doth rise."

Artist

Samuel Palmer

Date

1850

Medium

Etching on chine collé; seventh or eighth state of eight

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

A. Hyatt Mayor Purchase Fund, Marjorie Phelps Starr Bequest, 2003