Lot Essay
This was one of five oil paintings under way in the first half of the 1870s when it was listed by Lear, with joking annotations, under the title 'Walls' (Pitman, loc. cit.). The title The Vast Akrokeraunian Walls derives from Tennyson's poem 'To E.L. on his Travels in Greece" which was illustrated by Lear with another version of the composition (Pitman, op.cit., pp.146-8, Lear's no. 109, repr.).
Tennyson's verses had in fact been partly inspired by Lear's Journals of a Landscape Painter in Albania, Illyria, etc., published in 1851, in which Lear described his visit to Albania in the autumn of 1848 (he was there again in spring 1849 and April 1857). From 21 until 28 October he spent an arduous week on horseback among the Akrokeraunian Mountains, and his account includes a description of the snow-capped Mount Tchika.
Tennyson's verses had in fact been partly inspired by Lear's Journals of a Landscape Painter in Albania, Illyria, etc., published in 1851, in which Lear described his visit to Albania in the autumn of 1848 (he was there again in spring 1849 and April 1857). From 21 until 28 October he spent an arduous week on horseback among the Akrokeraunian Mountains, and his account includes a description of the snow-capped Mount Tchika.