Watercolor with pen and brown ink over graphite on moderately thick, moderately textured, beige wove paper
Dimensions:
Sheet: 2 1/2 × 10 inches (6.4 × 25.4 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Gift of Donald C. Gallup, Yale BA 1934, PhD 1939
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1997.7.93
Gallery Label:
Lear wrote in his diary that Sheikh Abadeh "seemed extremely beautiful—for luxuriousness of palms, and 2 mosque towers . . . O, City of Adrian! I can’t describe what it is, but there is a great charm about this same Antinöopolis.—The walk to Melaus was more interesting agriculturally than otherwise: such tracts of sugar cane! And a steam working engine which grunts and whistles as it might do at Kings Cross. A friend and fellow artist described how, when Lear came to a “good subject,” he would “lift his spectacles, and gaze for several minutes at the scene through a monocular glass he always carried; then, laying down the glass, and adjusting his spectacles, he would put on paper the view before us . . . with a rapidity and accuracy that inspired me with awestruck admiration.” Some of these drawings were made only five minutes apart. Lear referred to them as “penning out” and inscribed them with notes to aid him later when laying in the colors. Gallery label for Lure of the East - British Orientalist Painting (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-02-07 - 2008-04-28)
