Edward Lear, Near Sarténé, Corsica.
Signed with monogram (lower left) and inscribed and dated ‘near Sateréné [sic] 5 1/2 PM. April 18./ 1868.’ (lower right). Pencil and watercolour heightened with bodycolour and with scratching out. 6 7/8 x 16 ½ in. (17.5 x 41.9 cm.)
Provenance
with the Fine Art Society, London.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby’s, London, 21 January 1982, lot 221, where purchased for the present collection.
Lear made one visit to Corsica in 1868 and reached Sarténé, in the south of the island on 17 April. On 18 April he wrote in his diary, immortalised in his 1870 publication Journal of a Landscape Painter in Corsica, ‘I shall… try to get as many records as I can of the landscape, which is of a class rarely met with in such perfection’.