The lay of the land

ONE summer’s day in 1824, the 19-year-old Samuel Palmer put his sketchbook in his pocket and walked to a place that haunted his dreams so much he came to call it his ‘Gate into the World of Vision’. What landscape could live up to his description—the Cumbrian fells, perhaps? Or the rugged scenery of the Peak? No, what entranced Palmer were the fields around the village of Dulwich, which he could reach on foot from London, and when he sat down to draw it was in front of unspectacular farmland. That particular day, the heaps of reaped corn lying in lines up and down the field caught his eye;