Underriver–The Golden Valley

John Linnell

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

While working as a successful portraitist, Linnell produced evocative landscapes for his own pleasure. Between 1825 and 1835 he was close to "The Ancients," a visionary group led by Samuel Palmer—Linnell’s protégé and later his son-in-law. The two often sketched together, and the present work was likely made during a summer visit to Palmer’s home at Shoreham in Kent. Setting aside his typically careful draftsmanship, Linnell adopted Palmer’s flamboyant cursive pen-and-ink style to evoke the rolling fields and hedgerows of the Weald of Kent. Cottage roofs that peek through trees at the base of the foreground hill belong to the village of Underriver. Striking shifts of scale and expressive penwork convey an almost pantheistic response to the English countryside.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art