Edward Lear, “And I will See, Before I Die, The Palms and Temples of the South.”
Signed with initials EL lower right. Oil on canvas. Unframed: 48.5 by 75.5cm., 19 by 29¾in. Framed: 63 by 89.8cm., 24¾ by 35¼in.

Provenance
Commissioned in 1856 by Chichester Fortesque and thence by descent to Charles  Towneley Strachey, Lord O’Hagan M.E.P. (his sale: Sotheby’s, London, 3 November 1993, lot 21)
Purchased from the above by Martin R. Davies, Bristol

Literature
Lady Strachey (ed.), Letters of Edward Lear, London, 1907, p. 35

According to Lady Strachey, this painting is a replica of a work of the same title, painted for Sir John Simeon in 1856 (possibly the smaller Philae on the Nile, Christie’s, London, 15 December 2011, lot 57). It was completed in the same year for Chichester Fortesque and both pictures were probably based on a watercolour dated 1854 (Christie’s, London, 15 December 2010, lot 72). Lear was accustomed to reuse this title from Tennyson for his views of Philae.
This picture was commissioned by Chichester Fortesque (1823-1898) who Lear first met in Rome in 1848 when Fortesque described the artist as; ‘a delightful companion, full of nonsense, puns, riddles, everything in the shape of fun, and brimming with an intense appreciation of nature as well as history… I don’t know when I have met any one to whom I took so great a liking.’ (Lady Strachey, The Letters of Edward Lear, London, 1907, p. xxv) (Fig.1). Fortesque was Member of Parliament for Louth and later became Chief Secretary for Ireland, President of the Board of Trade and Lord Privy Seal. He was given a barony in 1874, taking the title Lord Carlingford. In 1871 he married Lady Waldegrave whose niece, Constance, Lady Stachey (Strachie) published Lear’s correspondence with Lord Carlingford and Countess Waldegrave.

Sotheby’s.