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Scarce Lithograph of Nicopolis, near Prevesa, Epirus.

Lear Edward Nicopolis. "Nicópolis" London Richard Bentley. 1851
Tinted lithograph of Nicopolis from Edward Lear's " Journals of a Landscape Painter in Albania, Illyria &c." [ plate 18]
The image shows the ruins of the Roman city of Nicopolis, looking across to Actium; founded by Octavian in commemoration of his victory in 31 BC over Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium it was later the capital of the Roman province of Epirus Vetus.

Throughout his life, Lear was an adventurous traveller and kept detailed journals of his trips. Among the places he visited in his life were Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Italy, Greece, Turkey and Egypt.
On Lear's visit to Calabria it was a disgusted young Englishman who referred to him as, ' "nothing but a damned, dirty landscape painter" '. This insult, Lear cheerfully adopted as his sobriquet.

One of his adventures took him for the first time to Albania and Macedonia – quite by accident, as he was attempting to return home after a trip to Thessaloniki in Greece in 1848 when a cholera outbreak forced him to take the overland route through the Balkans. Travelling through a land that was even more mysterious to foreigners than it is today – "to the unlearned tourist, indeed, Albania is a puzzle of the highest order", he wrote – and certainly not a typical holiday destination, Lear recorded copious notes of the things and people he encountered on the journey, as well as making many sketches.

The diaries and paintings that resulted from this trip were published in 1851 in "Journal of a Landscape Painter in Greece and Albania". On his extensive journey from the latter months of 1848, the places he visited included Tirana, Shkodra, Durres, Kruja and Berat. Today, there is an art museum in Berat that bears Lear's name, a testament to the high esteem in which Albania holds the work of the artist, not to mention the effect his words and images had in demystifying their land and culture. Light soiling and foxing mainly to blank margins; lithographer's pinholes to corners of image as usual.

Edward Lear (1812-1888)
was an artist, illustrator and writer known for his Nonsense Poetry, his limericks and his watercolours and lithographs of natural history and topography.
The twentieth of twenty one children, he was raised by his eldest sister, Ann, twenty-one years his senior. At the age of fifteen, he and his sister had to leave the family home and set up house together.
He started work as a serious illustrator and his first publication,in 1832, at the age of 19, was Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots.He would also contribute lithographs to John Gould's series of bird books .

It's easy to imagine John Gould's glee at discovering the naive, impecunious, and prodigiously talented Lear sketching away in the Parrot House. The professional relationship which followed was not so much a collaboration as seven years of exploitation. Gould immediately seized on the beauty of the folio format Lear had pioneered in the Psittacidae; he used it himself in all of his own publications. Gould's first book, A Century of Birds from the Himalayan Mountains, was published in 1832; Lear drew all of the backgrounds for Elizabeth Gould's illustrations, and trained her in lithography, but his work is not credited. In 1834, Lear contributed ten brilliant plates to Gould's A Monograph of the Ramphastidae, or Family of Toucans; he is not acknowledged, and, in fact, his signature is actually erased from the plates in the second edition. Gould apparently felt that once he had paid Lear for his work, it became his own; many of the plates which Lear created for The Birds of Europe are inscribed, "Drawn from Life by J&E Gould."

In all, Lear contributed to six of Gould's works: A Century of Birds from the Himalayan Mountains; A Monograph of The Ramphastidae, or Family of Toucans; The Birds of Europe; The Birds of Australia; Icones Avium; and A Monograph of the Trogonidae, or Family of Trogons.

After Gould's death in 1881, Lear wrote, "He was one I never liked really, for in spite of a certain jollity and bonhommie, he was a harsh and violent man. At the Zoological Society at 33 Bruton Street, at Hullmandel's—at Broad Street ever the same, persevering hard working toiler in his own line, but ever as unfeeling for those about him. In this earliest phase of this bird drawing, he owed everything to his excellent wife,—& to myself, without whose help in drawing he had done nothing."

He continued to paint seriously throughout his life and his natural history paintings were favourably compared with those of Audubon.

In 1846 Lear published A Book of Nonsense, a volume of limericks which went through three editions and helped popularise the form. His most famous piece of nonsense, The Owl and the Pussycat, followed in 1857, written for the children of his patron Edward Stanley, 13th Earl of Derby. Although he exhibited in the Royal Academy from 1859-1873, he depended financially on the benevolence of his friends and worries over money continued until his death in San Remo, where he had spent his final years.
Blackmer/ Sothebys:1318 ; Navari :986 [1st edition]. 152 by 252mm (6 by 10 inches).   ref: 2625  €100

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