Edward Lear, Lotus Eaters, Euboea, Greece. “They sat them down upon the yellow sand.”
Inscribed and numbered ‘51’, pen and ink and grisaille
9.5cm x 14.5cm (3.75in x 5.75in)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson;by descent until 1980.
Alfred Tennyson and Edward Lear were both good friends and frequently exchanged letters and verse. In 1862 Lear wrote: ‘I have been looking carefully over all Alfred Tennyson’s poems, & noting out all the Landscape subjects once more-which in all amount to 250. Sometimes I think I shall make the last effort of my life to illustrate the whole of these by degrees, & finally, having constructed a gallery near London -receive shillings for the sight of my pictures, & expire myself gradually in the middle of my own works-wheeling or being wheeled in a armchair.’ Lear produced 200 small wash drawings in the winter of 1884-85 which he mounted on large cards each with eight drawings inscribed with quotes by Tennyson underneath. Lear named this group of drawings – which includes the present and the two following works – his ‘Eggs’ and they were all kept at the Tennyson Research Centre, Lincoln, before being cut up and dispersed in 1980. Another, slightly larger set of 200 drawings (the ‘Chrysalisses’ set) is at the Houghton Library, Harvard University.Literature:Ruth Pitman, Edward Lear’s Tennyson, Manchester, 1988, pp.92-93, illustrated.
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