A Life of Art and Nonsense

How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!

Who has written such volumes of stuff!

Some think him ill-tempered and queer,

But a few think him pleasant enough.

So begins a long autobiographical poem written by Edward Lear for a young lady of his acquaintance during the early 1830's. He is known as the father of English 'nonsense' and we all know him most famously for his limericks and nonsense poems. An early limerick may well have been based on his own visage!

There was an Old Man with a beard,

Who said, "It is just as I feared! -

Two Owls and a Hen,

Four Larks and a Wren,

Have all built their nests in my beard!"

However, his ambition and what he regarded as his serious work, was landscape painting. I first mentioned Edward Lear in my blog Liverpool Meanderings, Oct 26 2018, in connection with the Audubon Birds of America collection at Liverpool Library. One of Lear's great joys was birds and he had been inspired by Audubon to embark upon his plan to sketch the birds at Regent's Park Zoo and to make his name as an artist that naturalists could turn to. This was an aspect of Edward Lear with which I was only vaguely familiar until first, reading the wonderful biography by Jenny Uglow and secondly, attending a recent Arts Society lecture entitled Edward Lear: Landscape Painter and Poet.

Edward Lear was a man of great simplicity and charm: children adored him, yet his humour masked epilepsy, depression and loneliness. Doctors had decreed that exercise reduced the risk of epileptic seizures and in his twenties he longed to get away from aviaries, studios and drawing rooms and to walk the country and sketch. One way to combine freedom with an artist's career was to take up landscape painting and in the summer of 1834, on a summer visit to Arundel, he launched into landscapes. He followed in the footsteps of Gainsborough, Constable and Turner and drew the mountains and fells of the Lake District (left: Wastwater). The looseness and freedom of his drawing was like a holiday, after years of detailed, intricate work on his illustrations of birds.

This was just the beginning. On 16 July 1837, the day after the funeral of William IV, Lear sailed for Antwerp. It felt like a new era for him, as well as for the country. He drifted through Germany, sketching market squares, timbered buildings and fairytale turrets. In September he reached Geneva and crossed the Alps, heading for Italy. Travelling through Milan, Bologna and Florence, he finally came to Rome where he found closeness and friendship in the international community of artists. Rome in particular was full of the English: 'many Inglesi arrived for 'the season' from January to April, enjoying the masked parades, balls and fireworks of Carnival and the dramatic Easter processions'. Lear was fascinated by the people and their costumes and was in love with Italian life. He was also fascinated (as I am) by trees and was moved and soothed by them, drawing and painting them all his life. His particular favourite was the olive tree: 'I think they are beautiful - more like a huge lavender bush - or a fine gray willow than anything else, and all over little shiny green olives'. (see right)

In early May 1938 Lear headed for Naples, continuing on to explore Sorrento, Amalfi and the exquisite coastline (if you haven't visited the area, it is still delightful with houses clinging to the rocky cliffs as they did in Lear's time). Lear's life developed a pattern: winters in Rome, spring and autumn in the mountains and summer spent travelling, struggling he felt with his landscapes but already producing excellent work. He did not want to leave Italy.

Though Lear returned to England briefly in 1841, by 1843 he was ready to undertake his long planned tour in the Abruzzi, the three northern provinces of Naples. His sketches and writing of this excursion became a celebrated travel book: Illustrated Excursions in Italy. You can download this free as an e-book by clicking on the link.

Among the admirers of Lear's Views in Rome and Excursions in Italy was the young Queen Victoria and in July 1846 she asked Lear to give her drawing lessons at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. Victoria and Albert had bought the house the year before and Albert was drawing up plans for rebuilding it in the Italianate style with a tower looking over the gardens to the sea - he said the view of the Solent reminded him of the Bay of Naples. Victoria liked to breakfast on the terrace and spend the morning painting and she noted that 'Mr. Lear teaches remarkably well, in landscape painting in watercolours'. The lessons continued back at Buckingham Palace in London and, although she later studied for many years under the Scottish painter William Leighton Leitch, her watercolour style stayed faithful to Lear's.

Edward Lear's later travels took him to Greece, Egypt, India and Palestine and he was a prolific artist. The Pre-Raphaelite school, founded in 1848, became a huge influence on him and he was to be inspired by Holman Hunt, Rosetti and Millais. He composed and published twelve musical settings of Tennyson's poetry. There is so much more to the man than I can find room for here.

In the words of Jenny Uglow: "Edward Lear lived a vivid, fascinating, energetic life. He was a man in a hurry, 'running about on railroads' from London to country estates and boarding steamships to Italy, Corfu, Palestine and India. Although he belongs solidly in the age of Darwin and Dickens, his genius for the absurd and his dazzling word-play make him a very modern spirit." Lear liked moderation: at the end of his life he declared himself 'an outsider and by nature and habit a Liberal', who felt that both 'gross and violent Radicals' and 'virulent Tories' should be kept from governing - a man after my own heart!

Edward Lear was a man of many dimensions, appearing in print as naturalist, lithographer, landscape artist, travel writer and creator of nonsense. I cannot finish without a verse from probably his most famous poem:

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea

In a beautiful pea-green boat:

They took some honey, and plenty of money

Wrapped up in a five-pound note.

The Owl looked up to the stars above,

And sang to a small guitar,

“O lovely Pussy, O Pussy, my love,

What a beautiful Pussy you are,

You are, You are! What a beautiful Pussy you are!”

Pussy said to the Owl,

“You elegant fowl, How charmingly sweet you sing!

Oh! let us be married; too long we have tarried,

But what shall we do for a ring?”

They sailed away, for a year and a day,

To the land where the bong-tree grows;

And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood,

With a ring at the end of his nose,

His nose, His nose,

With a ring at the end of his nose.

“Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

Your ring?” Said the Piggy, “I will.”

So they took it away, and were married next day

By the turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince and slices of quince,

Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

They danced by the light of the moon,

The moon, The moon,

They danced by the light of the moon.

Wonderful nonsense!