Kandy, Ceylon

In 1874 Lear travelled from India to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and visited his friend and patron Lord Northbrook's children who were based in Galle. He observed that 'There is so much vegetable luxuriance in Ceylon, that even the marrow in peoples' bones is Vegetable marrow. My!' (Letter to Chichester Fortescue, 28 March 1875, in Lady Strachey, ed., Later Letters of Edward Lear, London, 1911, p. 179). He executed a number of sketches of Adam's Peak, remarking in his journal on 1 December 1874: 'Adam's Peak range quite clear, but we had to go as far as six miles where I got an outline' (R. Murphy, ed., Edward Lear's Indian Journal, London, 1953, p. 221). The additional date of 1877 means that this drawing was worked up from an earlier sketch.