Edward Lear, An English Country House.
Pen and ink. 31 x 50.5cm (12 3/16 x 19 7/8in).
Provenance
With Thos. Agnew & Sons Ltd., London, no. 29336.
Private collection, UK.
According to a label attached to the reverse, this work is from an album of drawings illustrating Tennyson’s poems. It is suggested that the work comes from the collection of Sir Osbert Sitwell, sold at Sotheby’s in 3 March 1965.
Landscape with a viaduct and a castle in the distance, 1850.
Pen and ink, and watercolour heightened with white on paper. 13.7 x 18.9cm; 5½ x 7½in
Edward Lear, San Remo. Dec. 10, 1864.
Pen and ink and watercolour with traces of pencil. 17.5 x 54cm (6 7/8 x 21 1/4in)
Edward Lear, Jafa.
Signed with the monogram and dated 1884, further inscribed and dated ‘Feb. 17. 1867’, watercolour and bodycolour
9cm x 17cm (3.5in x 6.75in)
Travelling by ‘the grumpy roary groanery of camels’ across the desert, Lear arrived in Palestine in the spring of 1867 after visiting Egypt during the first months of that year.
Edward Lear, Dead Camel Getting Eaten by Buzzards.
Signed with the monogram, watercolour and bodycolour
18cm x 37cm (7in x 14.5in)
Edward Lear, Ajaccio Sunrise, Corsica.
Signed with the monogram, pencil heightened with bodycolour
12.5cm x 19cm (5in x 7.5in)
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.
Edward Lear, Wady Halfa, Egypt.
Signed with the monogram and dated 1884, further inscribed and dated ‘Feb. 3, 1867, watercolour and bodycolour
9cm x 17cm (3.5in x 6.75in)
Walker Galleries, London;Christie’s, London, 26 January 1984, lot 178.
The present work closely relates to a watercolour of the same subject and date at the Yale Center for British Art (inv. no. B1997.7.191).
Edward Lear, One Tall Agave, Varenna, Lake of Lecco (Bellagio). Illustration to Tennysaon’s “The Daisy.”
Signed with the monogram and inscribed ‘Varenna’, further inscribed with the title under the mount and numbered ‘175’, grisaille
9.5cm x 14cm (3.75in x 5.5in)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson;by descent until 1980.
Literature:Ruth Pitman, Edward Lera’s Tennyson, Manchester, 1988, pp.172, illustrated.
Edward Lear, Wall in Samos.
Inscribed with the title and dated 3rd May 1848, further annotated with extensive colour notes, pen and ink, watercolour and bodycolourNote: It has been suggested that this is a view from the North of Cephalonia.
19cm x 28cm (7.5in x 11in)
Davis Galleries, New York.
During his two-month tour to Athens, mainland Greece and the island of Euboea in the summer of 1848, Edward Lear made almost 150 landscape drawings and kept a diary of his experiences and impressions. Lear had lived in Rome for the past ten years, but this seminal journey through Greece was to be the beginning of his travels throughout Europe, India, and the Middle East. Lear subsequently published the same view of Samos in his volume of twenty lithographs titled Views in the Seven Ionian Islands in 1863.
