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Lot Essay
This drawing is a study for Lear's most famous Mount Athos painting, Mount Athos and the Monastery of Stavronikétes, now at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.
Lear attempted to visit Mount Athos in 1848 with Church, but was unsuccessful. He eventually returned in September 1856, visiting all twenty principal monasteries and many of their dependencies. He produced a series of fifty drawings of the monasteries and landscapes, of which the present drawing is part. He apparently intended to publish a volume of his tour of Mount Athos but this was never fulfilled, although he did adapt several of his drawings for his series of illustrations to Tennyson’s poems.
Lear attempted to visit Mount Athos in 1848 with Church, but was unsuccessful. He eventually returned in September 1856, visiting all twenty principal monasteries and many of their dependencies. He produced a series of fifty drawings of the monasteries and landscapes, of which the present drawing is part. He apparently intended to publish a volume of his tour of Mount Athos but this was never fulfilled, although he did adapt several of his drawings for his series of illustrations to Tennyson’s poems.