Born in London, Samuel Palmer (1805~1881) was the son of a bookseller. Aprecocious artist, he exhibited his work at the Royal Academy of Arts at the age offourteen, and executed a series of canonical “visionary”paintings before reachingthirty.In 1825, Palmer organized “the Ancients”, as they called themselves, a group ofadmirers of William Blake(1757~1827) that included Edward Calvert(1799~1883)and George Richmond(1809~1896), with whom Palmer painted the Englishcountryside in the Kent village of Shoreham, a small town thirty miles from London.It was during this prolific period in Palmer’s early career that Blake’s bucolicvision, as exemplified in his illustrations for Dr. Robert John Thornton’s Pastoralsof Virgil(1821) and his own Book of Job, deeply affected the young Palmer.Although the Ancients had several predecessors on the Continent, it was the firstartistic community established in nineteenth century England. Palmer’s Shorehamperiod saw his greatest achievements as an artist.Palmer was largely overlooked for forty years after his death, until the 1920s,when the British art world paid new attention to Palmer and the Ancients. Just as theRomantics had turned their attention to Gothic and Medieval art, the Neo-romanticsfound an interest in the Ancients. Blake and Palmer had created an English Arcadiathat inspired the artists of the early twentieth century who sought escape from thedevastation of the Great War.With their communal spirit and revival of medieval art, the Ancients anticipatedthe Pre-Raphaelites of the Victorian era. They deserve a place in British art historyas their influence may be seen in Neo-romanticism and even in contemporary art.