The Return Home, 1828 / 1904
Time spent with the Ancients was, for Calvert, illuminating and inspirational, their meetings in Palmer’s cottage - ‘Rat Alley’, as it was affectionately known - involving discussions of poetry, printing technique and deeper spiritual musings. The elder Blake, whom Palmer described as a ‘prophet’ and a ‘man without a mask’, impressed upon Calvert and the group an ardent religious appreciation for Nature and the earth, as well as instructing the young artist in the process of wood-engraving and the visionary artistic style.
Calvert’s work after Blake’s death immediately matured, as if the loss of such an inspirational figure had spurred him on to greater heights. The period that followed from 1827 to 1831 is universally considered to have been Calvert’s pinnacle, comprising wood and copper engravings and lithographs all characterised by fine, dextrous lines depicting sylvan vistas - imagery redolent of both classical pastoral scenes and symbolic Christian parables.
‘The Return Home’ is the last of the 1830 engravings. It shows a weary shepherd, crook in hand, being borne on the back of a donkey. His wife awaits him in the doorway of his cottage at the distant end of the track along which he is riding... Apart from its obvious spiritual affinities with Blake’s Virgil engravings, the most memorable thing about this little engraving is its texture... It is almost pointillism, if the term may be applied to a composition in black and white.
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