Edward Lear, Pizzoferrato, 1844.

Black chalk, pencil, heightened with white, on light buff paper. Signed and dated 1844 lower right, inscribed Pizzoferrato lower left. 14 x 26.5 cm. (5 1/2 x 10 1/2 in), corners trimmed.

Provenance:
John Scandrett Harford (1787-1866); thence by descent to the present owner.

Engraved:
Edward Lear, Illustrated Excursions in Italy, 1846, plate 26

“It is a most romantic village, at the foot of an isolated rock crowned by a convent; nothing can be wilder or less interesting that the treeless country immediately around this place, nor more superb than the endless view over ridges of purple hills crowned by little towns, forming as it were, a continuous plain down to the shores of the Adriatic.” [op. cit., 1846, p. 99].

Bloomsbury.