Edward Lear, Lake Nemi.
Inscribed with artist’s colour notes in pencil. Pencil on buff paper. 23.5 x 40.5 cm (9 1/4 x 16 inches).
Provenance
With Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd, Old Bond Street;
Christopher Fry and thence by descent.
Lear was in the area on 12 October 1840.
A Blog of Bosh 
“Lo, Nemi! navelled in the woody hills
So far, that the uprooting Wind which tears
The oak from his foundation, and which spills
The Ocean o’er its boundary, and bears
Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares
The oval mirror of thy glassy lake;
And calm as cherished hate, its surface wears
A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake,
All coiled into itself and round, as sleeps the snake.
And near, Albano’s scarce divided waves
Shine from a sister valley;—and afar
The Tiber winds, and the broad Ocean laves
The Latian coast where sprung the Epic war,
”Arms and the Man,” whose re-ascending star
Rose o’er an empire:—but beneath thy right
Tully reposed from Rome;—and where yon bar
Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight
The Sabine farm was tilled, the weary Bard’s delight…”