Edward Lear 1812-1888

The town of Vodena is situated on a mountain, forty-six miles north-west of Salonica in Nothern Greece. 

Lear had passed the winter of 1847-8 in Rome, but by April, concerned with the shifting political situation, he left Italy and  travelled via Malta to Corfu. He had then intended to cross to the mainland and make a tour through Albania, but Sir Stratford and Lady Canning asked him to accompany them on their trip back to Constantinople and he readily agreed.  The Cannings decided to stop at Athens for a week, but their visit was prolonged and in mid June Lear set out on a tour of central Greece with his friend and patron, Charles Church.  Lear left Greece at the end of July and travelled on to Turkey, spending time with the Cannings in Constantinople.  He returned, however, in September, visiting Salonica and travelling throughout Northern Greece where he executed the present watercolour.  By the end of the month he was in Albania where he travelled through some of the wildest countryside he had ever visited, recorded in his Journals of a Landscape Painter in Greece and Albania, published in 1851