Edward Lear British, 1812-1888

 The present highly finished watercolour is based on sketches which Lear drew in May 1849 whilst visiting the monasteries of Meteora in central Greece. Lear first signed his works with a monogram in 1858 which reveals that the present work was worked up in his studio, possibly for exhibition, once he returned to England.

In the Spring of 1849, after his tour of the Peloponnese with Franklin Lushington, Lear left Patras on his own and crossed central Greece in an unsuccessful attempt to visit Mount Athos. In May 1849 he reached the monasteries of Meteora, which were built in the middle ages on top of the impressive rocks which characterise the region. By the date of Lear’s visit these hermit retreats had declined and were no longer in use. Their beauty however, and that of the surrounding landscape, attracted many visitors and Lear, like those before him, was amazed by the ‘gigantic crags’ on which the monasteries were perched. He was fascinated by the rocky scenery of Meteora and admitted ‘I do not think I ever saw any scene so startling and incredible; such vast sheer perpendicular pyramids, standing out of the earth, with the tiny houses of the village clustering at the roots…Strange, unearthly looking rocks are these, full of gigantic chasms and round holes, resembling Gruyere cheese, as it were, highly magnified, their surface being otherwise perfectly smooth…at this late hour a sombre mystery makes them seem like the work of some genii, or enchanter of Arabian romance.’ (Edward Lear In Greece – Journals of a landscape painter in Greece and Albania, ed.William Kimber, 1965, p. 206).

On the 16th May Lear rose early to sketch the monasteries. He was overawed by their beauty and wrote in his journal ‘Truly they are a most wonderful spectacle; and are infinitely more picturesque than I had expected them to be. The magnificent foreground of fine oak and detached fragments of rock struck me as one of the peculiar features of the scene. The detached and massive pillars of stone, crowned with the retreat of the monks, rise perpendicularly from the sea of foliage, which at this early hour, 6am, is wrapped in the deepest shade, while the bright eastern light strikes the upper part of the magic heights with brilliant force and breadth…silvery white goats were peeping from the edge of the rocks into the deep, black abyss below; the simple forms of the rocks rise high in air, crowned with church and convent, while the eye reaches the plains of Thessaly to the far-away hills of Agrafa. No pen or pencil can do justice to the scenery of Meteora.’ (Edward Lear In Greece – Journals of a landscape painter in Greece and Albania, ed.William Kimber, 1965, p. 207)