Lot Essay
Lear toured the Ionian Islands from March to June 1863, after an earlier visit in 1848. He was still on Ithaca on 1 May, and in the Cephalonian port of Sami on the 2 May. Owing to Lear's unconventional approach to Greek orthography it is difficult to identify the place names inscribed on this drawing, but they may indicate that the village is one of those on the western promontory of Palyke, some 35 kilometers from Assos, where the artist inscribed a drawing at 5 o'clock on the previous day, 8 May (and numbered it 143).