The Ford

F. L. M. Griggs is credited with the rediscovery of Samuel Palmer and indeed was heir to Palmer’s visionary imagination. Griggs, a Catholic convert, was deeply religious; his broodingly spiritual work often echoes Palmer’s sense of solitude and desire to stave off the encroachments of modernization. Another important influence on Griggs’s work was his training in and love of architecture, apparent in etchings like The Ford. As one of his biographers remarked, these structures "were purely imaginary but . . . however fantastic, would definitely ‘stand up’ if built."