Collections | Drawings & Prints

Edward Lear (1812–1888)
View of the Forest of Valdoniello, Corsica
Watercolor, heightened with white tempera, over some pencil, including 12 vertical, equally spaced ruled lines, on gray wove paper mounted by the artist on pasteboard
Signed at lower left in brush and black ink, with monogram EL; inscribed (by the artist?), on mount, below, in pen and black ink, [FOR]EST OF VALDONIELLO; in pencil, VALDONIELLO;
11 5/8 x 18 1/4 inches (295 x 464 mm)
Purchased as the gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Salomon; 1977.19
See CORSAIR catalog record for this item »

Lear left for Corsica on 8 April 1868, traveling with the writer John Addington Symonds (1840–1893), and completed his tour on 6 June 1868. By 9 May, Lear had decided to visit the great Corsican forests of Aïtone, Valdoniello, and Vico, and by the twelfth of that month he was in Valdoniello. The artist's journey was documented with illustrations in his last travel book, Journal of a Landscape Painter in Corsica, published in 1870. Lear's dramatic watercolor of Valdoniello is close to an illustration in the book and is also related to a painting in the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.

See enlargement/print this image
List of works
Text only list
Search images