Watercolor, pen and brown ink, and graphite on thick, rough, cream wove paper
Dimensions:
Sheet: 4 7/8 x 13 3/4 inches (12.4 x 34.9 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1975.4.1653
Gallery Label:
Edward Lear is best known today for his nonsense verse, but he was also a professional travel artist. Amada, painted during a tour of Egypt in 1867, is one of a series of views of the ruined temple made on the morning of February 12th. Lear arrived early to avoid the midday Egyptian heat and made a sequence of sketches of the site from different angles, each one carefully inscribed with the date, time, and its number in the sequence. This view was taken at 9:3o a.m., but other drawings in the series show he was working from at least as early as 6:5o a.m. From the times inscribed on these watercolors, we know that Lear was giving himself around five minutes per sketch before shifting position to draw another view of the site. Gallery label for Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-06-09 - 2008-08-17)
