(1846; compiled by John E Gray, lithographed by J W Moore and coloured by Bayfield).
The stay would also lead to the publication of his best-known volume, The Book of Nonsense (1846), an elaboration of drawings done for the Earl’s children.
In 1837, the Earl enabled Lear to make his first journey to Italy, the artist then settling in Rome for a decade, and establishing himself as a topographical painter. Having suffered from asthma and bronchitis from infancy, he found the Mediterranean climate kind to his health, and returned to England only for short visits. However, he was known in his home country – initially through albums of lithographs, and later through the paintings that he exhibited at the Royal Academy, the British Institution and the Society of British Artists. Impressed by the lithographs of his landscapes, Queen Victoria invited him to give her some drawing lessons. When in England, he also attempted to expand his own technical expertise by studying at the Royal Academy Schools (1850) and working with William Holman Hunt en plein air (1852).
From 1853, Lear spent long winters abroad – in Egypt and the Middle East (1853, 1857), in Corfu and other parts of Greece (1854, 1861-62), and on the French Riviera (1864-65, 1867-70). His last major sketching tour would be to India in the years 1873-75. By then, he had settled into Villa Emily, a house that he built for himself in San Remo. It was named after the second wife of Lord Tennyson, Lear having met and befriended the couple in 1871. When he built a second house for himself in San Remo, in 1881, he called it Villa Tennyson. He died there on 29 January 1888. A year later, a selection of his landscape drawings based on Tennyson’s poems were published in a limited edition. However, by that time his fame as a nonsense writer and illustrator had eclipsed his achievement as a topographer.
His work is represented in the Government Art Collection and numerous public collections, including the British Museum, The Courtauld Gallery, the V&A and the Tate; the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford), The Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge), Liverpool Public Library, the Walker Art Gallery (Liverpool) and The Whitworth Art Gallery (Manchester); and Blacker-Wood Library, McGill University (Montreal), Houghton Library, Harvard University (Cambridge MA), the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston) and Paul Mellon Center for British Art at New Haven.
Further reading:
Briony Llewellyn, ‘Lear, Edward (b Holloway, London, 12 May 1812; d San Remo, Italy, 29 Jan 1888)’, Jane Turner (ed), The Dictionary of Art, London: Macmillan, 1996, vol 18, pages 904-906; Vivien Noakes, Edward Lear 1812-1888, London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1985; Vivien Noakes, ‘Lear Edward (1812-1888)’, H C G Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, vol 32, pages 994-1000; Vivien Noakes, The Painter Edward Lear, Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1991
