Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/210

 192 P A L P A L ness and suffusion of colour he is hardly to be surpassed; but neither in invention, strength of character, nor vigorous draughtsmanship does he attain any peculiar excellence. His finish is great, his draperies ample, his flesh golden-hued. He painted many fine portraits. A face frequently seen in his pictures is that of his daughter Violante, of whom Titian was more or less enamoured. Two works by Palma are more particularly celebrated. The first is a composition of six paintings in the Venetian church of S. Maria Formosa, with St Barbara in the centre, under the dead Christ, and to right and left Sts Dominic, Sebastian, John Baptist, and Anthony. The second work is in the Dresden Gallery, representing three sisters seated in the open air (presum ably the painter s daughters) ; it is frequently named The Three Graces. Other leading examples are the Last Supper, in S. Maria Mater Domini ; a Madonna, in the church of S. Stefano in Vicenza ; the Epiphany, in the Brera of Milan ; the Holy Family, with a young shepherd adoring, in the Louvre ; St Stephen and other Saints, Christ and the Widow of Nain, and the Assumption of the Virgin, in the Accademia of Venice ; and Christ at Emmaus, in the Pitti Gallery. Palma s grand-nephew, Palma Giovane, was also named Jacopo (1544 to about 1626). His works, which are extremely numerous in Venice, and many of them on a vast scale, belong to the decline of Venetian art. PALMAS, LAS. See CANARY ISLANDS, vol. iv. p. 799. PALMER, EDWARD HENRY (1840-1882), Orientalist, was born at Cambridge, August 7, 1840. He lost his parents when he was a mere child, and was then brought up by an aunt. As a schoolboy he showed the character istic bent of his mind by picking up the Romany tongue and a great familiarity with the inner life of the Gipsies. He w r as not, however, remarkably bookish, and from school was sent to London as a clerk in the City. Palmer disliked this life, and varied it by learning French and Italian, mainly by frequenting the society of foreigners wherever he could find it. He had a peculiar gift for making himself at home with all manner of strange people, which served him throughout life, and was as effective with Orientals as with Europeans. His linguistic faculty was in fact only one side of a great power of sympathetic imitation. He learned always from men rather than from books, and by throwing his whole flexible personality into unison with those from whom he was learning. In 1859 Palmer returned to Cambridge, apparently dying of con sumption. He had an almost miraculous recovery, and in I860, while he was thinking of a new start in life, fell in at Cambridge with a certain Sayyid Abdullah, a teacher of Eastern languages. Under his influence he resolved to give himself to Oriental studies, in which he made very rapid progress. He now attracted the notice of two fellows of St John s College, became an undergraduate there, and in 1867 was elected a fellow on the ground of his attain ments, especially in Persian and Hindustani. He was soon engaged to join the survey of Sinai, and followed up this work in 1870 by exploring the Wilderness of the Wandering along with Drake. After a visit to Palestine and the Lebanon he returned to England in 1870, and next year published his Desert of the Exodus. In the close of the year 1871 he became Lord Almoner s Professor of Arabic at Cambridge, married, and settled down to teaching work. Unhappily his affairs were somewhat .straitened, mainly through the long illness of his wife, whom he lost in 1878 ; he was obliged to use his pen for Oriental and other work in a way that did not do full justice to his talents, and at length he became absorbed in journalism. In 1881, two years after his second marriage, he finally left Cambridge and ceased to teach. In the following year he was asked by the Government to go to the East and assist the Egyptian expedition by his knowledge and his great influence over the Arabs of the desert Al-Tlh. It was a hazardous task, but Palmer rightly judged that he could not refuse his country a service which no one else was able to render. He went to Gaza, and without an escort made his way safely through the desert to Suez an exploit of singular boldness, which gave the highest proof of his capacity for dealing with the Bedouins. From Suez he was again sent into the desert with Captain Gill, to procure camels and do other service of a very dangerous kind, and on this journey he and his companion were attacked and murdered (August 1882). Their remains were re covered after the war, and now lie in St Paul s Cathedral. Palmer s highest qualities appeared in his travels, especially in the heroic adventures of his last journeys. His brilliant scholar ship is also seen to advantage in what he wrote in Persian and other Eastern languages, but not so much so in his English books, which were generally written under pressure. His scholarship was wholly Eastern in character, and lacked the critical qualities of the modern school of Oriental learning in Europe. All his works show a great linguistic range and very versatile talent; but he was cut off before he was able to leave any permanent literary monu ment worthy of his powers. His chief writings are The Desert of the Exodus, 1871.; Poems of Bchd cd Din (Ar. andEng., 2 vols. ), 1876-77; Arabic Grammar, 1877; History of Jerusalem, 1871 (by Besant and Palmer the latter wrote the part taken from Arabic sources); Persian Dictionary, 1876, and Ennlinh and Persian Dictionary (posthumous, 1883) ; translation of ilicQu rdn (unsatis factory), 1880. He also did good service in editing the Name Lists of the Palestine Exploration. PALMER, SAMUEL (1805-1881), landscape painter and etcher, was born in London on the 27th January 1805. He was delicate as a child, and received his educa tion, in which a study of the classics English as well as Greek and Latin played a notable part, at home under the wise and genial care of his father. In 1819 we find him exhibiting both at the Royal Academy and the British Institution ; and shortly afterwards he became intimate with John Linnell, who gave him excellent counsel and assistance, advising drawing from the figure and from the antique in the British Museum, and intro ducing him to Varley, Mulready, and, above all, to William Blake, whose strange and mystic genius had the most powerful effect in impressing on Palmer s art its solemn and poetic character. Before very long the studies of this period were interrupted by an illness which led to a residence of seven years at Shoreham in Kent. Here the artist sought a closer acquaintance with nature, and the characteristics of the scenery of the district are con stantly recurrent in his works. Among the more important productions of this time are the Bright Cloud and the Skylark, paintings in oil, which was Palmer s usual medium in earlier life, but one with which he is now hardly at all associated in the popular mind. In 1839 he married a daughter of Linnell s. The wedding tour was to Italy, where he spent over two years in study. Returning to London, he was in 1843 elected an associate and in 1854 a full member of the Society of Painters in Water Colours, a method to which he afterwards adhered in his painted work. His productions are distinguished by an excellent command over the forms of landscape, and by mastery of rich, glowing, and potent colouring. He delighted in the more exceptional and striking moments of nature, and especially in her splendours of sunrise and sunset. His paintings are less literal transcripts than poetic and imaginative renderings. They are admirably composed and well-considered pastorals, which find a singularly accurate literary parallel in the landscape work of Milton in his minor poems ; indeed among the best and most important paintings executed by Palmer during his later years was a noble series of illustrations to L Allegro and // Penxeroso, now in the possession of Mr L. 11. Valpy.