Lear’s projected “Topography of Greece”

Of all Edward Lear’s extensive travels, he retained a special affection for Greece, and a feeling that his own vision as a topographical artist might suit the Greek landscape.

“I cannot but think that Greece has been most imperfectly illustrated . . . the vast yet beautifully simply sweeping lines of the hills have hardly been represented I fancy—nor the primitive dry foregrounds of Elgin marble peasants &c. What do you think of a huge work (if I can do all Greece)?” (from a letter of August 1848).

From 1848 to 1864, Lear travelled widely in what is now Greece, making approximately 1,500 sketches, a sixth of his total output. He returned constantly to his Greek subjects in a range of artistic mediums (lithography, pen and ink, watercolour, oil) and in his travel writing.

Although he never fulfilled his aim of publishing the whole of his “polygraphic Hellenic proclivities” his Greek journeys can be reconstructed fairly accurately, from manuscripts, drawings and paintings and from printed and online sources.

Bassae, 14 April 1849. The Higgins, Bedford.

This page lists Lear’s travels in Greece in chronological order, with links to the individual journeys. There is a section on Lear’s Greek maps (currently under construction), and a select bibliography. Finally, a list of public collections worldwide indicates where his work can be found.

Ithaca: The School of Homer, 30 April 1863. Private Collection.

The journeys

Greek place names are given here in their modern forms. Lear’s “Greek” travels were partly in provinces of the Ottoman empire, with place names in a mix of languages, or in the British Ionian Islands protectorate, which tended to use the old Italian names. Lear never visited The Dodecanese, the Sporades, the Cyclades (except when his boat called in at Syros) or the islands of the N. and N.E. Aegean.

April–May 1848: Corfu and three of the other Ionian Islands (Zakynthos, Ithaca, Cephalonia)
June–July 1848: Athens, the mainland and the island of Euboea
September 1848: Macedonia
March–April 1849: The Peloponnese, Attica and Central Greece,
website by Stephen Duckworth
April–May 1849: Epirus and Thessaly
November 1855–June 1856: Corfu
August–October 1856: Mainland Greece and Mount Athos
Part One: From Corfu to Salonica
Part Two: From Salonica to Athos
April 1857: Epirus: Ioannina and the Zagoria villages
December 1857–March 1858: Corfu
June–August 1858: Corfu
April–May 1862: Corfu
November 1862–April 1863: Corfu
April–June 1863: The Ionian Islands
January–April 1864: Corfu
April–May 1864: Crete.
Edward Lear: The Cretan Journal, edited by Rowena Fowler
Edward Lear and Crete, website by Stephen Duckworth
April 1866, September 1877: Corfu

Jenedge (Pella) [Giannitsa], 14 September 1848.
Houghton Library.

Bibliography

NOTE: This list includes only items related to Greece; an extensive bibliography of Lear is available, compiled by Marco Graziosi.

Edward Lear, Journals of a Landscape Painter in Greece and Albania, & c. [Online versions have text only] (London: Richard Bentley, 1851). Rptd (1) as Edward Lear in Greece. Introduction by Peter Quennell. (London: William Kimber, 1965). Rptd (2) as Edward Lear in Albania: Journals of a Landscape Painter in the Balkans. Edited by Bejtullah D. Destani and Robert Elsie. (London: Centre for Albanian Studies, 2008).

Edward Lear, Views in the Seven Ionian Islands (London: privately printed, 1863).

Lawrence Durrell, Lear’s Corfu: An Anthology Drawn from the Painter’s Letters (Corfu Travel, 1965); rptd. as an additional chapter in the new edition of Prospero’s Cell: A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corcyra (London: Faber and Faber, 1945; new edition1975).

Edward Lear in Greece: A Loan Exhibition from the Gennadius Library, Athens (International Exhibitions Foundation, 1971).

Edward Lear The Corfu Years: A Chronicle Presented through his Letters and Journals, ed. Philip Sherrard (Athens and Dedham: Denise Harvey, 1988).

Η Ελλάδα του Edward Lear: Από τις Συλλογές της Γενναδείου / Edward Lear’s Greece: From the Gennadeion Collection, ed. Fani-Maria Tsigakou (Cultural Centre of Thessaloniki,1997).

Edward Lear's Greece: Watercolours from the Gennadius Library, Athens, ed. Fani-Maria Tsigakou (Princeton University Art Museum, 1999).

Fani-Maria Tsigakou, “Reassessing the Edward Lear Collection at the Benaki Museum”, Μουσείο Μπενάκη 2 (2002): 137–46.

Stephen Duckworth, “Edward Lear’s Cretan Drawings”, The New Griffon 12 (2011): 103–115.

Edward Lear:The Cretan Journal, ed. Rowena Fowler (Athens: Denise Harvey, 1984; 3rd ed., 2012).

Ο Edward Lear & τα Ιόνια Νησιά / Edward Lear & the Ionian Islands (Corfu: Museum of Asian Art, 2012).

Quentin Russell, “In the Footsteps of Edward Lear (1812–1888): Assessing the Legacy of his 1848 Balkan Journey”, British Art Journal 15, 2 (Winter 2014): 59–67.

Aspasia Voudouri, “Prespa-Ohrid 1848: A Drifting Walk of Edward Lear”, unpubld. conference paper, September 2020.

Where to see Lear’s Greek subjects

(compiled from the database of Lears in public collections, created by Stephen Duckworth)

The largest collections of Lear’s Greek drawings and paintings are those of the Gennadius Library, Athens and the Houghton Library, Harvard. In the UK the largest collections are those of the Scottish National Gallery and the Ashmolean Museum.

The following collections hold one or more of Lear’s Greek subjects:

Aldeburgh: Britten Pears Foundation
Bedford: The Higgins
Belfast: The Ulster Museum
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
Bolton Museum
Bridlington: Burton Agnes Hall
Brighton Museum and Art Gallery
Bristol Museum and Art Gallery
Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum; Trinity College
Edinburgh: Scottish National Gallery
Leeds Art Gallery
Liverpool Central Library
London: British Museum; Courtauld Institute;
Government Art Collection; Tate Britain;
Victoria and Albert Museum; William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow
Manchester: Whitworth Art Gallery
Newcastle upon Tyne: Laing Art Gallery
Newport (Gwent): Museum and Art Gallery
Oxford: Ashmolean Museum
Rochdale: Touchstones
Sheffield: Graves Art Gallery
Swansea: Glynn Vivian Art Gallery