Emo Verkerk’s Portraits of Edward Lear

Posted on February 14, 2016 by Marco Graziosi

Painter and sculptor Emo Verkerk has produced several portraits of Edward Lear over the years, here are three, from the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag website.Studie voor Portret van Edward Lear (1985)

Studie voor Portret van Edward Lear (1985).
Oil and collage on plastic canvas. 55,5cm x 40cm. Gemeentemuseum Den Haag: 1005685.

Edward Lear 1989

Edward Lear (1989).
Litho, ink on paper. 65,5cm x 50,5cm. Gemeentemuseum Den Haag: 1005496.

Edward Lear 1985-1999

Edward Lear (1985-1999).
Inkjet print on photo paper with glass painting. 86cm x 67cm. Gemeentemuseum Den Haag: 1005688.

Here is an article presenting a recent exhibition of Verkerk’s work.

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More Edward Lear Online from Houghton

Posted on February 13, 2016 by Marco Graziosi

el_palmA quick note on new Edward Lear materials which Houghton Library have placed online:

Studies of palm trees. 1876. TypDr 805.L513.76p (1-8).

Poems and songs by Alfred Tennyson / set to music, and inscribed to Mrs. Alfred Tennyson by Edward Lear. London: Cramer, Beale & Chappell, 1853-1860. Typ 805L.53.

Gray, John Edward. Gleanings from the menagerie and aviary at Knowsley Hall.Knowsley: Privately Printed, 1846. Typ 805L.46 (B).

Also, the Athos – Agion Oros blog has an article summarising the Edward Lear pictures of Mount Athos they have posted over the last decade: here is a full list of relevant entries.

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The Archbishop of Dublin (NOT a Lear Limerick)

Posted on February 12, 2016 by Marco Graziosi

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There was an Archbishop of Dublin
Whom corns were incessantly troubling
Till one night he arose
And stuck pins in his toes
Which assuaged that Archbishop of Dublin.

This was listed on at a Sotheby’s auction as one in a pair of illustrated Edward Lear limericks: while the limerick is not bad, it is most definitely not by Lear.

Catalogue description:

Lear, Edward.
TWO ILLUSTRATED LIMERICKS, COMPRISING
i) ‘There was a young lady called Emma’, ink drawing of a bald lady seated at a dressing table, 86 by 105mm. with five-line verse below; ii) ‘There was an Archbishop of Dublin’, ink drawing of a clerical gentleman sticking pins in his toes, 150 by 211mm. with five-line verse below; both unsigned, both on single leaf of paper, mounted, framed and glazed on both sides.

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Edward Lear’s Letters to Ellen Rawson & Daughter

Posted on February 11, 2016 by Marco Graziosi

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This is part of a collection of 11 letters Edward Lear wrote to Mrs. Ellen Rawsom and her daughter Constance which were sold at Sotheby’s on 10 December 2013. Does anyone know where they ended up?

The catalogue description:

SERIES OF 11 AUTOGRAPH LETTERS SIGNED, TO MRS ELLEN RAWSON (6) AND HER DAUGHTER CONSTANCE (5),
one with a pen and ink drawing of Lear astride an elephant, discussing his art (“…My last – & perhaps best, – large oil paintings (Argos, Pentedatelo, Gwalior, & Ravenna,) should have been sold at Christie’s, but just now Christie’s have odiously set forth that they have not been applied to early enough…”) and poetry, his life in Italy (“…I weary exceedingly of living so much alone – tho’ I don’t see how it is to be helped…”) and plans to visit India (“…Can I bring you back a Nelliphant? Or some India Rubber or India Nink?…”), repeatedly promising to send various autographs for Constance’s collection, 40 pages, 8vo and 12mo, San Remo, Genoa, Derby, London, and Brighton, 27 August 1872 to 25 May 1884, also with an autograph address panel by Wilkie Collins, to Lear (postmarked 25 August 1883), marginal nicks and tears, some dust staining

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There Was an Old Man of Cape Horn…

Posted on February 10, 2016 by Marco Graziosi

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A variant version of both illustration and verse for ‘There was an Old Man of Cape Horn’. As first published in the 1846 edition of A Book of Nonsense, the limerick concludes “So he sat on a chair, till he died of despair, | That dolorous Man of Cape Horn.” The conclusion here reads “So he sate on a chair & tore off his hair – that intrinsic old man of Cape Horn”. Interestingly the Kraus manuscript (Koch Foundation) includes “He sate” before continuing “and behaved like a bear – That intrinsic…” This suggests that both the Krauss manuscript and the present piece are closely connected. The reverse of the leaf includes an abandoned and smudged drawing of a head.

This was sold at Sotheby’s.

Here is the Koch version, from Lear in the Original, p. 71:

el_horn-koch

“So he sat on a chair | And behaved like a bear” would in the end become attached to one of the old man from Peru, here in the version on p. 12 of Bosh and Nonsense:

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Notice however that the picture at the top is more similar to the final one for the 1846 Book of Nonsense version (here in a later coloured edition):

el_peru-1846

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Edward Lear, Corfu (1856)

Posted on February 9, 2016 by Marco Graziosi

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Edward Lear, Corfu.
Signed, inscribed and dated ‘Corfu/ELear./1856′ (lower right). Oil on canvas. 26.5 x 49.5cm (10 7/16 x 19 1/2in).

The present lot shows a distant view of the citadel at Corfu, with the Albanian mountains beyond. Painted from a high position, near the village of Ascension, the composition is typical of the oils and watercolours Lear produced during this period (for example Corfu from the village of Ascension and Corfu from the Benitza Road, on the hill of Gastouri, 1862, Christie’s, London, 15 December 15, 2011, lot 59, and Corfu from the Hill of Gastouri, 1857-58, Christie’s, London, 12 December, 2007, lot 61).

Lear first visited Corfu in 1848, arriving by boat from Naples, and was immediately entranced by it, revealing in a letter to his sister ‘it really is a Paradise’. Lear later wrote that ‘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 Straights, with the great Albanian mountains beyond.’

Lear returned to Corfu in December 1855, settling there until 1863, when many British residents left the island with the transfer of sovereignty to Greece. He returned again in 1877.

For a similar composition, painted in watercolour, see Edward Lear: An exhibition of works from the Dayton International Collection, Sotheby’s London, 22-26 March 2004, exhibition catalogue, no.10, illustrated p.22.

Bonhams.

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Edward Lear, View of Ohrid, Macedonia (1848)

Posted on February 8, 2016 by Marco Graziosi

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Edward Lear, View of Ohrid, Macedonia.
Signed with monogram, inscribed and dated ‘Akridha 1848’ (lower right). Watercolour, bodycolour and gum arabic over pencil. 11.5 x 17.8cm (4 1/2 x 7in).

Bonhams.

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Edward Lear, San Sabbas (1859)

Posted on February 7, 2016 by Marco Graziosi

el_san-sabbas-s

Edward Lear, San Sabbas.
Signed with initials, inscribed and dated ‘San Sabbas/1859’ (lower right). Pen, ink and sepia wash. 20.5 x 30.5cm (8 x 12in).

Bonhams.

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Edward Lear, Cefalu, Sicily

Posted on February 6, 2016 by Marco Graziosi

el_cefalu-s

Edward Lear, Cefalu, Sicily.
Signed with monogram (lower left). Watercolour. 11.5 x 18cm (4 1/2 x 7 1/16in).

Lear visited Sicily on two occasions: in the Spring of 1842 and in the early summer of 1847; in the later visit he travelled with John Joshua Proby (1780-1855), who Lear later discovered was heir to the Earl of Carysfort.

Bonhams.

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Edward Lear, Plain of Argos from Mycene (1879)

Posted on February 5, 2016 by Marco Graziosi

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Edward Lear, Plain of Argos from Mycenae.
Signed with monogram and dated 1879 (lower left), inscribed ‘Argos from Mycenae/1849 (lower right), also titled beneath mount. Watercolour. 29 x 52.5cm (11 7/16 x 20 11/16in).

The present lot is one of a number of similar views that Lear produced from sketches made during a trip to Argos in the spring of 1849. Executed in 1879, it predates a watercolour of the same subject, 10 ¼ x 20 ½ in., which was sold at Christie’s London, 30 March 1993, lot 84 (this may be the work acquired by the Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, Wisconsin in the same year, although that work is listed as being 19 x 28 in., in the Museum’s records), as well as a large oil of the same subject, 31 ½ x 64in., now in the collection of Trinity College, Cambridge, which was painted in 1884.

Charles Church, later the Dean of Wells, met Lear in 1847; the two men were to become lifelong friends, and Church amassed a considerable collection of his Lear’s work. They embarked on a tour of the Peloponnese in the autumn of 1848, Church acting as guide and interpreter. The trip was a litany of misfortune; firstly, Lear fell from his horse, badly injuring himself, then he had a severe reaction to an insect bite which made him seriously ill; once he recovered, Lear planned to meet up with Church to visit Mount Athos, but the area was closed to travellers due to an outbreak of cholera.

Lear returned to Greece in the spring of 1849, with another great friend, Frank Lushington, a trip that the artist remembered with great fondness, describing, in a letter to his sister ‘a mile of bright scarlet ground. Then half a mile of blue or pale pink… the whole earth is like a rich Turkey carpet.’

Bonhams.

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