Lot Essay
After several vain attempts, Lear finally visited Mount Athos in September-October 1856. He hated the monastic life there, describing it as 'God's world maimed & turned upside down :- God's will laughed at & falsified', but added that 'I never saw any more striking scenes than these forest screens & terrible crags, all lovely lovely lovely: paths thro' them leading to hermitages where these dead men abide, - or to the immense monasteries where many hundred of these living corpses chaunt prayers nightly & daily: the blue sea dars dars against the hard iron rocks below - & the oak fringed or chesnut covered height above, with always the great peak of Athos towering over all things ...' (letter to Mrs. Tennyson, 9 October 1856; Vivien Noakes, ed., Edward Lear: Selected Letters, Oxford 1988, pp. 139-40).
Lear planned to publish the drawings he did on this visit together with his journal but nothing came of this (Vivien Noakes, Edward Lear, London 1968; 1979 edition pp. 115, 119, 122). He did however do twenty-seven drawings of Mount Athos among his illustrations to Tennyson (Ruth Pitman, Edward Lear's Tennyson, Manchester and New York, 1988, pp. 140-2); they were to illustrate Tennyson's verses 'To Edward Lear on his Travels in Greece' of 1851-2, published 1853. This composition was no. 122 (altered from 123), inscribed 'Athos, all things fair,/(To E.L. on his travels in Greece.)/Monastery of Stavronikites/Mount Athos' (repr. Pitman, p. 152).
Lear also painted ten oils of Mount Athos, including one of 1857 based on this composition (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection; repr. Edward Lear 1812-1888, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy, April-July 1985, no. 53).
For the Earl of Northbrook as in important patron of Edward Lear, see lot 100
Lear planned to publish the drawings he did on this visit together with his journal but nothing came of this (Vivien Noakes, Edward Lear, London 1968; 1979 edition pp. 115, 119, 122). He did however do twenty-seven drawings of Mount Athos among his illustrations to Tennyson (Ruth Pitman, Edward Lear's Tennyson, Manchester and New York, 1988, pp. 140-2); they were to illustrate Tennyson's verses 'To Edward Lear on his Travels in Greece' of 1851-2, published 1853. This composition was no. 122 (altered from 123), inscribed 'Athos, all things fair,/(To E.L. on his travels in Greece.)/Monastery of Stavronikites/Mount Athos' (repr. Pitman, p. 152).
Lear also painted ten oils of Mount Athos, including one of 1857 based on this composition (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection; repr. Edward Lear 1812-1888, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy, April-July 1985, no. 53).
For the Earl of Northbrook as in important patron of Edward Lear, see lot 100