A watercolour by Samuel Palmer for Sydney

5/9/24 - Acquisition - Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales - Churches "are, to the Christian’s eye, the most charming points of an English landscape - gems of sentiment for which our woods and green slopes, and hedgerow elms, are the lovely and appropriate setting". This was the credo of Samuel Palmer, who liked to punctuate the landscapes he painted with a steeple. This is the case of a watercolour that the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney bought in 2023 from the Gerrish Fine Art Gallery in London (ill. 1). Produced in 1874, it was exhibited the same year at the Old Water Colour Society, and acquired on that occasion by Joseph Overbury, a stockbroker who owned several works by the artist, including a set of drawings made in 1825 now in the Ashmolean Museum, as well as two…