A Blog of Bosh

Edward Lear, Antrodoco, Italy.
Inscribed and dated August 14 1843, pen and ink and watercolour. 31cm x 45cm (12in x 17.75in)

Provenance
David Galleries, New York.

This watercolour relates to a lithograph in Lear’s Illustrated Excursions in Italy published in 1846. Queen Victoria was so impressed by this ambitious work of two volumes illustrating the artist’s travels through Italy in 1842-43 that she appointed Lear to give her a series of drawing lessons in the summer of 1846.

For 14th and 15th of August 1843 Lear notes ‘these two days I spent in sketching the town, and the pass up to the picturesque Madonna delle Grotte. The only chance for drawing is by rising before the sun, and making use of every moment of time until the heat (which in this valley is very great) obliges one to return to shelter. After the mid-day meal, which was a cheerful one enough, at the Casa Todeschini, sleep and music divided the hours until it was time to recommence drawing. The stillness of an Italian town during this period of the day is striking. Three or four children are playing with a tame sheep under my window, making a hundred pretty groups and pictures; the two widows are humming faintly to the guitar; all the rest of Antrodoco seems fast asleep. The magnificence of the pass just above the town towards evening is extreme: except in the creations of Titian or Giorgione, one seldom sees such hues of purple and blue and gold as those with which those lofty hills are clothed with in an Italian sunset.’ (Edward Lear, Illustrated Excursions in Italy, 1846, p. 58)

Lyon and Turnbull.

Edward Lear, Bordighera, Italy.
Inscribed and dated 1864, extensively annotated, pen and ink and coloured wash. 22cm x 33cm (8.5in x 13in)