Edward Lear, Aswan on the Nile

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Marco Graziosi

Edward Lear, Aswan on the Nile, Egypt.
Inscribed and dated ‘Assoan [sic] 10.25. AM. Jany 27. 1867.’ (lower left) and numbered ‘(241)’ (lower right) and further inscribed with colour notes and further inscribed ‘lowest’ (on the reverse). Pencil, pen and black ink and watercolour, heightened with touches of white. 2½ x 10½ in. (6.4 x 26.6 cm.).

This small, jewel-like watercolour dates from Lear’s second and final Nile trip of 1867. Before his first visit of 1854 he had written, ‘the contemplation of Egypt must fill the mind, the artistic mind I mean, with great food for rumination of long years’. He was deeply impressed by what he called ‘the great granite hills of Assouan’.

At the beginning of 1867 Lear travelled south from Cairo, picking up his Canadian cousin Archie Jones at Luxor. They reached the second cataract, the most southerly point of their journey, on 4 February. At Aswan, where Lear executed the present drawing at 10.25 on the morning of 27 January, he also executed a larger panoramic drawing of the river, which he numbered ‘245’. That was done at 5.30 pm. At 11.30 am, immediately after executing the present drawing, he turned his attention away from the river and drew the Aswan quarries. The quarry drawing, which is rectangular in format, is numbered ‘242’.

The following day Lear rose early and executed more drawings at Aswan, at 8.30 am and 9-10 am, before leaving for Es Shelaal, where he executed his next view at 4.45 pm. These three drawings are numbered 246, 248 and 249. The drawing numbered 247, which has not been found, must have been executed between 8.30 and 9.00 am at Aswan. The drawing numbered 260 was done at 2.30pm on 29 January and is inscribed ‘Shelaal’. By the 30 January Lear was at the first cataract at Philae.

Within this remarkable sequence of dated drawings, the present drawing (241) and the examples numbered 246 and 260 are all panoramic river views measuring between 2 and 3 inches in height and 10 and 11 inches in width. Of these three, the present example is by far the most refined.

Christie’s.

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Edward Lear, Canea, Crete

Posted on June 19, 2012 by Marco Graziosi

Edward Lear, Khaneá (or Canea), Crete.
Inscribed, numbered and dated ‘…4 P.M./18.April/64/Kanea. [in Greek] Crete (20)’ (lower right) and further inscribed ‘Hoopoes’ (lower left) and variously inscribed with colour notes. Pencil, pen and ink and watercolour on blue paper. 6 3/8 x 9 7/8 in. (16.2 x 25.1 cm.).

The present drawing was executed in the neighbourhood of Canea during Lear’s visit to Crete in 1864. He left Corfu on 4 April, travelled via Athens, and arrived at Canea, the chief harbour in the west of Crete, on 11 April, a few days before the present drawing was executed. From 14 April, Lear stayed in Mr Guarracino’s country house at Halépa, exploring the district, and then left Crete on 31 May for England.

Christie’s.

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Edward Lear, Taormina

Posted on June 18, 2012 by Marco Graziosi

Edward Lear, Taormina, Sicily.
Nnumbered ‘158 [crossed out] 165’ (lower left, overmounted) and ‘(165)’ (lower right, overmounted) and further inscribed with colour notes
pencil, pen and brown ink and blue and ochre wash on paper. 13 7/8 x 19¾ in. (35.4 x 50.3 cm.).

Edward Lear visited Sicily in the spring of 1842. He returned in the company of a young friend, John Proby, at the beginning of May 1847. The second visit coincided with a period of political upheaval, when it seemed likely that foreigners might soon be excluded from Italy. Lear resolved to spend as much time there as he could, starting in the south in Sicily.

In a letter to Chichester Fortescue written in October 1847 Lear told his friend that he had stayed at ‘Taormina the Magnificent’ for four or five days. The artist had been captivated by Taormina on his earlier visit and had drawn the classic view from the Greek theatre towards Mount Etna. To execute the present drawing Lear would have had his back to Etna – he is looking up at the town towards the rocky peak of Castelmola.

Christie’s.

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Edward Lear, Sant’Antonio, Malta

Posted on June 16, 2012 by Marco Graziosi

Edward Lear, Sant’ Antonio, Malta
Iinscribed and dated ‘Sant’ Antonio. Malta. 9. AM. March 31. 1866.’ (lower centre) and numbered ‘264’ (lower right) and variously inscribed with colour notes. Pencil, pen and brown ink and watercolour heightened with touches of white on buff paper. 6¼ x 19¾ in. (15.8 x 50.2 cm.).

After spending part of the winter in Italy Lear journeyed to Malta for his health from December 1865 to April 1866, having visited there previously in 1862. Sir Henry Storks, who had been High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands was now Commander-in-Chief in Malta. Lear arrived, but found that Storks had just departed. Lear remained in Malta for three months.

Christie’s.

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Edward Lear, St Sabbas the Sanctified

Posted on June 15, 2012 by Marco Graziosi

Edward Lear, The monastery of St Sabbas the Sanctified (Mar Saba), near Bethlehem.
Nnumbered, inscribed and dated ‘Deir Mar Sabbas./May 1.1858/Deir Mar Sabbas/(127)’ (lower right) and further inscribed with colour notes
pencil, pen and brown ink and watercolour on paper. 13¾ x 19¾ in. (35 x 50.2 cm.).

The Great Lavra of St Sabbas the Sanctified, known in Arabic as ‘Mar Saba’ is a Greek Orthodox monastery overlooking the Kidron Valley in the West Bank, east of Bethlehem.

Lear referred to his visit to Santa Saba in May 1858 in a letter to his sister dated 21 May and in one to Hallam Tennyson dated 18 September (R. Pitman, Edward Lear’s Tennyson, 1988, pp. 88-89). To his sister Ann he wrote that he executed ‘some good drawings’ of Santa Saba on 1 May 1858, despite the fact that ‘the whole place, even on May 1st was so like an oven that I felt as if I should be baked’. In the 1880s Lear returned to the subject of Santa Saba for an illustration to Tennyson’s poem The Palace of Art (op.cit., p. 89). A drawing of Santa Saba executed on 30 April 1858, showing the subject in different lighting, is in a private collection and another similar in size to the present picture, Mar Sabbas, numbered ‘122’ and dated 30 April 1858, is in the Houghton Library (R. Falchi and V. Wadsworth, Edward Lear, ex. cat., San Remo, 1997, p. 249).

Christie’s.

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Edward Lear, The Citadel from Ascension

Posted on June 14, 2012 by Marco Graziosi

Edward Lear, Distant view of the Citadel from the village of Ascension, Corfu.
Signed with monogram (lower right) and inscribed and dated ‘Corfu. 1856.’ (lower left). Pencil and watercolour heightened with touches of bodycolour. 7 x 14¾ in. (17.8 x 37.5 cm.).

Lear lived on Corfu from 1855 to 1858 following a brief visit to Corfu in the summer of 1848 when he was entranced by the island: ‘I wish I could give you any idea of the beauty of this island, it really is a Paradise. The extreme gardeny verdure – the fine olives, cypresses, almonds, & oranges, make the landscape so rich’. Built by the Venetians who had controlled the island for five hundred years, the Citadel dominated the landscape, creating a focus for the variety of panoramas that Lear developed. A number of his finest paintings illustrate the island’s topography, and many of his drawings were worked up into lithographic plates for his book Views in the Ionian Islands (1863).

The landscape that surrounded the hills of Gastouri and the village of Ascension (now Análipsis), named after the chapel on the hilltop where the Feast of Ascension took place, provided Lear with particularly expansive and breath-taking views down through luscious olive groves, across the water towards the snow-capped mountains of Albania: ‘[N]o place in all the world is so lovely I think. The whole island is in undulations from the plain where the city is, to the higher hills on the west side; & all the space is covered with one immense grove of olive trees – so that you see over a carpet of wood wherever you look; & the higher you go, the more you see, & always the Citadel & the Lake, & then the Straits, with the great Albanian mountains beyond’.

Christie’s.

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Edward Lear and the Scientists

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Marco Graziosi

Rowena Fowler writes to announce a must-see exhibition: “Edward Lear and the Scientists,” at the Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AG.

I have now received my copy of the special Edward Lear issue of the Harvard Library Bulletin (Summer-Fall 2011. Volume 22: Numbers 2-3) containing Robert McCracken Peck’s “The Natural History of Edward Lear,” an essay which provides the first really detailed study of Lear’s work as a zoological illustrator and illuminates several aspects of his activity in these early years: essential reading in preparation of the Royal Society exhibition.

The volume also includes an essay by Hope Mayo on “The Edward Lear Collection at Harvard University,” a history of its development, in particular thanks to W.B. Osgood Field and Philip Hofer.

After the flood of articles celebrating the bicentenary, very little has appeared in the papers. Here is an article in Italian: Edward Lear e le altre penne straniere che hanno raccontato la Calabria, by Anna Foti, RTV.

Also of interest: The ‘nonsense’ works of the late Edward Gorey, by Philip Valys, Sun Sentinel.

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Edward Lear Bust Unveiled in Corfu (and a limerick!)

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Marco Graziosi

A bust of Edward Lear was unveiled at the Cavalieri Hotel in Corfu on 24 May. The article also mentions an Edward Lear society I had never heard of before. Here is a picture of the bust by Franco-Hellenic sculptor Margo Roulleau-Gallais:

One more thing I did not know was that the Harold B. Lee Library “is fortunate to own several original letters and drawings by Edward Lear.” And they give a sample I don’t remember seeing before:

More on old Derry-down-Derry:

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Weekend Reading & Listening

Posted on May 25, 2012 by Marco Graziosi

Charles Lewsen kindly sent me a number of photographs of the celebrations for Edward Lear’s bicentenay in London on 12 May and I have created a Facebook album you might like to see.

This week’s Guardian Book Podcast:

Poet and broadcaster Michael Rosen tells us why we should all get over Dickens and instead celebrate the bicentenary of nonsense writer Edward Lear. He explains why Lear is such a key figure in the history of poetry for children, charting his influence from the metaphysical whimsy of Norton Juster to the dark adventuring of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. He also makes the case for The Owl and the Pussycat as one of the great English love poems for romantics of all ages.

Turtle Bunbury has a piece on Edward Lear and in particular his relationship with Ireland.

Two short articles that mention the Edward Lear exhibition opening today in Corfu:

If you are lucky enough to be in Paris, you will have another opportunity (the last one I’m afraid) to see the Mr. Lear group at the Théatre de la Reine Blanche: “A cette occasion, le Band vous promet un concert de pur Nonsense post-rock.”

Meanwhile, Slingsby, an Australian theatrical company, have announced a new opera to celebrate Edward Lear, the Father of Nonsense Literature: more info here, but consider that the date of the premiere has been moved to 26 April 2013:

Based on the life of Edward Lear, Ode To Nonsense tells the imagined last hour of Lear’s life.

Not enough? Then why not go and see An Evening of Neo-Absurdism: Phil Jacobs, the author, writes that “the material is very nonsensical… Any friend of Edward’s is a friend of ours!”

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More Edward Lear Celebrations

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Marco Graziosi

BBC Radio 4 has two more programmes including references to the Edward Lear celebrations on 12-13 May:

  • Limerick Creator at 200 is an interview with Michael Rosen;
  • Roger McGough’s Poetry Please of 21 May kicks off with a reading of Edward Lear’s “How Pleasant to Know Mr Lear” (6 days left to listen to the programme on iPlayer). McGough also announces a full programme devoted to Lear, send your requests.

More to read:

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