Attracted by the beauty of the landscape with its unique coastline, both professional and amateur artists were drawn to Purbeck in the first decades of the twentieth century. Readily accessible by train from London, they visited and stayed there in some numbers. Artists of national and international stature such as Philip Wilson Steer, Paul Nash, Charles Conder and Augustus John particularly favoured the Swanage area. The artist Alfred Palmer was no exception and after years abroad he and his wife Mary arrived there in 1939. They remained in Swanage for the duration of WWII, near their daughter Francesca living at Langton Matravers. The son of architect Frank Palmer, Alfred Richard Field Palmer (1877-1951) was educated at Dulwich College and then studied art at Clapham School of Art. From 1898 he attended the Royal Academy Schools where John Singer Sargent was one of the visiting artists at its Life and Painting Schools.
In keeping with many other young artists of the period, Palmer disliked the constraints of the Academy’s rigid training. By 1903 he had joined hundreds of fellow compatriots in Paris studying at the more relaxed Académie Julian. There he remained faithful to representational art despite the modernism sweeping the city. Palmer exhibited at the Paris Salon as well as at the Royal Academy where he showed six times between 1903 and 1927. He also travelled extensively on the Continent and had studios in Berlin, Florence, Brussels, Middle East, Holy Land and Spain.
Alfred and Mary Croom married in 1906, living in the Manor House, Fordwich near Canterbury where Palmer formed the East Kent Art Society with Lord Northbourne.
A blue plaque in Canterbury commemorates his associations there. During WWI Palmer was with the Secret Service in Gibraltar and Censor’s Department of the War Office. As a gifted linguist he acted as an interpreter with German prisoners of war, making the most of his opportunity by sketching them too.
The best of Dorset in words and pictures
