Lot Essay
The Prince's palace is seen on the left of the peninsular with the cathedral, since rebuilt, a little to the right.
Lear had passed through Nice, at night, in the Spring of 1864 but he spent the following winter there with the intention of covering the neighbouring coast for a possible publication. As he wrote to William Holman Hunt from the Promenade des Anglais on 7 January 1865, "One of my aims this winter was to 'get' all the Corniche or Riviera di Ponente; .. that I have done both ways - with 145 sketches & better health than before - also less abdomen". These sketches he "penned out" in the evenings for his possible, but never realised, book (Vivien Noakes, ed., Edward Lear, Selected Letters, 1988, pp. 202-3).
As he wrote to his friend Fortescue on 13 November, Lear "had no idea the Cornice was so magnificent in scenery; Eza [Eze] and Monaco are wondrously picturesque, and Mentone very pretty" (Lady Strachey, ed., Later Letters of Edward Lear, 1911, p. 51).
Lear used this composition for one of his illustrations to the poems of Tennyson, no. 155, one of a number of Corniche views illustrating "The Daisy" (see R. Pitman, Edward Lear's Tennyson, 1988, pp. 164-5, 169, 206 repr.).
For another view of Monaco by Lear see lot 74. A further, less finished drawing with ink and watercolour washes, inscribed "Monaco/8.30 A.M./31. December 1864" and numbered "134" was sold at Sotheby's on 14 March 1985, lot 200, repr.; it shows a distant view from the opposite direction.
Lear had passed through Nice, at night, in the Spring of 1864 but he spent the following winter there with the intention of covering the neighbouring coast for a possible publication. As he wrote to William Holman Hunt from the Promenade des Anglais on 7 January 1865, "One of my aims this winter was to 'get' all the Corniche or Riviera di Ponente; .. that I have done both ways - with 145 sketches & better health than before - also less abdomen". These sketches he "penned out" in the evenings for his possible, but never realised, book (Vivien Noakes, ed., Edward Lear, Selected Letters, 1988, pp. 202-3).
As he wrote to his friend Fortescue on 13 November, Lear "had no idea the Cornice was so magnificent in scenery; Eza [Eze] and Monaco are wondrously picturesque, and Mentone very pretty" (Lady Strachey, ed., Later Letters of Edward Lear, 1911, p. 51).
Lear used this composition for one of his illustrations to the poems of Tennyson, no. 155, one of a number of Corniche views illustrating "The Daisy" (see R. Pitman, Edward Lear's Tennyson, 1988, pp. 164-5, 169, 206 repr.).
For another view of Monaco by Lear see lot 74. A further, less finished drawing with ink and watercolour washes, inscribed "Monaco/8.30 A.M./31. December 1864" and numbered "134" was sold at Sotheby's on 14 March 1985, lot 200, repr.; it shows a distant view from the opposite direction.