Mysterious Shadows

Leaving London to live in Bedford last August, I mourned the loss of the immediacy of the city's art galleries. I was going to miss the ability to pop into the National Gallery for 10 minutes on the way home or to breeze up to London Bridge and swing by Tate Modern, both things I did on a regular basis. Yet in my London-centric stubbornness I've overlooked what is now on my doorstep and it's taken me 6 months to get my act in gear and visit The Higgins, Bedford's impressive gallery, recently refurbished, and named after the beneficent brewing family, whose 'wealthy bachelor' son who incidentally 'liked opera' gave a huge collection of British paintings to the town. Among them hangs this Samuel Palmer.

Ever since I spent hours in the Ashmolean in Oxford, looking at the work of the Camden Town Group and the pre-Raphaelites rather than writing essays, I have adored Palmer and it was great to have the experience of a 'shadow city' moment so close to home. In Palmer's images John Piper saw, 'mysterious shadows shortening before the rising full moon, the cut edge of the standing corn, fruit trees looking to the ground under the weight of fruit'. 'These were', Piper felt, 'the realities that gave substance to his vision'. It's nice to have some fruit and substance to help my own attempts at finding a vision, which are, both literally and emotionally, so close to home. Click here for more information about The Higgins' exhibition of 'A National Art'.

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