Tour: A Passion for Prints - Samuel Palmer: Of his Time and Influence

Join David Alston to hear about the Graves Gallery’s latest display, A Passion for Prints: A Sheffield Collection. 

The display tells the story of a father and son from Sheffield whose passion for prints led them to develop an outstanding collection, including works by Jacques Callot, Rembrandt, Edouard Manet, Odilon Redon, and more.  

In this third instalment of tours about A Passion for Prints, the focus shifts to Samuel Palmer (1805-1881) and the intensely pastoral and poetic world he created in his etchings. More than thirty years after his death, the passion for Palmer was revived by a group of young artists in the 1920s following the traumas of the First World War . 

This tour forms part of the programme of events complementing the display A Passion for Prints: A Sheffield Collection, which continues at the Graves Gallery until December 2024.  

As Deputy Director of Arts for Sheffield City Council, David led the City Art Galleries in the 1990s, before becoming the Keeper of Art in the National Museum of Wales.  He left Wales to become Galleries Director for the millennium project of The Lowry on Salford Quays, returning to Wales to be Arts Director for the Arts Council of Wales. He was awarded an MBE in 2020 for services to the Arts. His family base has been Sheffield since the 1980s when he arrived in the city to be the first Assistant Curator for the Ruskin Collection.