PALMER, Alfred

Artist

Born and died in London.

An artist who designed artworks for the Ceramic Studio.

British painter and sculptor who frequently visited South Africa. Son of Frank Palmer, architect. Figure painter, mainly of native studies. Trained at the Royal Academy Schools under JS Sargent.
1899: Trained in Paris under Marcel Barchet and Jean-Paul Laurens. (Pretoria Art Museum, archives).

Sept 1925: hired rooms at the Durban Art Gallery as a studio.
1925-1929: Natal-sketching and studying the Drakensberg, Durban and the Zulus (The Rand Daily Mail, 3 March 1929; The Natal Mercury, 19 May 1927 p 14; 24 January 1929 p 21). [Durban Art Gallery, (Town Clerk) Minute papers: Correspondence (Natal Archives Depot)].

In the 1937-1939 building Manners Mansions he painted an important and vast mural for the entrance foyer depicting the mine-dump industrial landscape of the Witwatersrand (Chipkin 1993:149).

List of projects

With photographs
With notes

GaMothle - was Bantu Affairs Commissioner: 1932. Tshwane (Pretoria), Gauteng - Artist

Manners Mansions: 1939. Johannesburg, Gauteng - Artist murals

Post Office: 1934. eShowe, KwaZulu-Natal - Artist tiled panel

References

Chipkin, Clive M. 1993. Johannesburg Style - Architecture & Society 1880s - 1960s. Cape Town: David Phillip. pp 149

Hillebrand, Melanie. 1991. The women of Olifantsfontein - South African studio ceramics : Die vroue van Olifantsfontein - Suid-Afrikaanse ateljee-keramiek . Pretoria: South African National Gallery. pp 15