A Blog of Bosh

Edward Lear, Great Awk.
Watercolor painting prepared for Plate 82, “Great Auk” in Selby’s Illustrations of British Ornithology printed in London in 1841. Brown wash and ink over graphite on paper. Signed ‘PJ Selby E Lear 1831’ lower left. Numbered ‘82’ upper left corner. 1831. Paper size: 16 x 21 1/2 in.

Provenance
Collection of H. Bradley Martin

Literature
Noakes, Edward Lear 1812–1888 (Royal Academy of Arts) 6
Jackson, Bird Etchings, pp. 201–13
cf. Susan Chitty, That Singular Person Called Lear (1988)
Susan Hyman, Edward Lear’s Birds (1989)

When he was just sixteen—before his residence at Lord Stanley’s Knowsley Hall and before his long but ultimately unsatisfying association with John Gould—Lear met and was employed by the naturalist John Prideaux Selby. “It is likely that Lear served an informal apprenticeship with Selby. If so, it was a fortunate training, for Selby demonstrated a bold and lively approach to his ornithological work which was ahead of his time, and which Lear was to develop with much skill in his later bird drawings” (Noakes, 6). Lear’s biographer Susan Chitty also credits Selby for advancing the young artist’s draughtsmanship, noting that “under his influence Lear’s birds grew large and lively” (p. 19–20).

Selby’s folio publication revolutionized ornithological illustration in Great Britain. “Selby’s bird figures were the most accurate delineations of British birds to that date, and the liveliest. After so many books with small, stiff bird portraits, this new atlas with its life-size figures and more relaxed drawing was a great achievement in the long history of bird illustration” (Jackson, p. 212). Of the 277 known surviving original watercolors for Illustrations of British Ornithology, the “Great Auk” is the only one by Lear. The majority of the drawings, 217, are by Selby himself, with fifty-five contributed by his brother-in-law, Robert Mitford, and four by Sir William Jardine.

A preliminary pencil drawing of Lear’s “Great Auk” is in the collection of the Blacker-Wood Library, McGill University. This preliminary drawing is not signed; the present watercolor wash drawing based on the McGill sketch is signed by Lear and inscribed by Selby, who executed and signed the etched plate. The etching enlarges the primary figure while eliminating completely the detail of the head in the upper right corner of the watercolor.

Lear’s particular affinity for portraying big birds has been often remarked on. “The large, monstrous, sinister and eccentric birds … are among the most remarkable bird drawings ever made, and it is evident that Lear endowed them with some measure of his own whimsy and intelligence, his energetic curiosity, his self-conscious clumsiness and his unselfconcious charm” (Hyman, p. 45). Certainly Lear’s wonderful “Great Auk” exhibits more than a hint of self-portraiture.

Arader Galleries.

Edward Lear, Study of a King Vulture.
Signed lower left: E Lear del., dated lower right: Aril 1832, and inscribed lower center: Sarcoramphus papa (Linn.)/Drawn from life at the/Surrey Zoological Gardens
Watercolor over pencil heightened with bodycolor and gum arabic. 1832. Paper size: 10 x 12 3/4 in.

Provenance
The ornithologist T.H. Newman
By whom given to the Zoological Society of London
Sold through Wheldon and Wesley, 1992
Private Collection

Arader Galleries.

Edward Lear, Study of a Paradise Shelduck.
Watercolor over pencil heightened with bodycolor and gum arabic. ca. 1830. Paper size: 8 3/4 x 10 3/4 in.

Prepared for T.C. Eyton’s A Monograph of the Anatidae or Duck Tribe, London, 1838.
Signed lower left: Edward Lear del./Casarca variegata (Gen)/juv. and in another hand: Casarka castanea, Eyton.

Provenance
The ornithologist T.H. Newman
By whom given to the Zoological Society of London
Sold through Wheldon and Wesley, 1992
Private Collection

Arader Galleries.