William Blake's influence on Samuel Palmer's paintings can be seen in the works he produces over the next ten years or so, which are generally reckoned to be his greatest.

These works are of landscapes around Shoreham, near Sevenoaks in the west of the county of Kent.

Palmer, born in Newington, London in Surrey Square off the Old Kent Road, is the son of a bookseller and sometime Baptist minister, and had been raised by a pious nurse.

Palmer painted churches from around age twelve, and first exhibited Turner-inspired works at the Royal Academy at the age of fourteen.

He has little formal training, and has no formal schooling, although he was educated briefly at Merchant Taylors' School.

He had met William Blake in 1824 through John Linnell.

Samuel Palmer purchases a run-down cottage, nicknamed "Rat Abbey", and it is here that he lives from 1826 to 1835, depicting the area as a demi-paradise, mysterious and visionary, and often shown in sepia shades under moon and star light.

Here Palmer also associates with the group of William Blake-influenced artists known as The Ancients (including George Richmond and Edward Calvert).

They are among the few who ever see the Shoreham paintings since, as a result of attacks by critics in 1825, he only ever opens these early portfolios to selected friends.

Samuel Palmer's somewhat disreputable father, Samuel Palmer senior, moves to the area, his brother Nathaniel having offered him an allowance that would "make him a gentlemen" and so restore the good name of the family.

Palmer senior rents half of the Queen Anne-era 'Waterhouse' which still stands by the River Darent at Shoreham and is now given the slightly grander-sounding name of 'Water House'.

Palmer's nurse, Mary Ward, and his other son William join him here.

The Waterhouse is used to accommodate overflow guests from "Rat Abbey".

Samuel Palmer, a key figure in English Romanticism, produces such visionary pastoral paintings as “In a Shoreham Garden”, circa 1829, depicting a rustic Kentish garden in a mystic light.