Lot Essay
The Villa Congreve belonged to Walter Congreve, a friend and neighbour of the artist at San Remo where Lear lived from 1870, from 1871 he lived at the Villa Emily and from 1881 at the Villa Tennyson. The two boys are presumably Hubert and Arnold Congreve, Walter Congreve's sons and great favourites of Edward Lear who taught them drawing and encouraged Hubert, the elder, to become an artist; they appear in Lear's more finished watercolour of the previous year San Remo from Villa Congreve (see exhibition catalogue, Edward Lear 1812-1888, London, Royal Academy, 1985, p.125, no.38, illustrated in colour, p.71).