Edward Lear (1812-1888) : his connection with Malta (1848-1866)

Abstract

This dissertation attempts to trace Lear' s visits, letters and poetry, and also seeks to document some of the available drawings and paintings by Lear of Malta and Gozo. Between the years of 1848 and 1866, Lear visited Malta seven times. His work on the island ranges from pencil sketches, water colours, drawings and highly finished water colours. These years come close to some important milestones in Lear' s life - his drawing lessons to Queen Victoria, meetings with Holman Hunt and the Tennysons, acceptance for admission to the Royal Academy and the publications of his Travel Journals and Nonsense verse. By the 1860' s Lear had given up any ideas of becoming a grand figure painter and worked instead towards his ambition 'to topographise all the journeys of my life '. In the drawings of Gozo, Lear fulfilled part of this ambition declaring that he had drawn "every bit of it". In Malta, he drew a considerable amount of sea-views - horizontal expanses of the Grand Harbour or small and peaceful sea-scenes in Sliema. Lear usually collected travel sketches of the places he visited hoping to complete them sometime in his studio. Some of the more popular views he reproduced many times in a process he called "working on the 'Tyrants"'. Most of the Malta and Gozo works may have escaped this process since Lear' s open studio days in Malta were not too successful. Lear's inability to sell any of his paintings and the loneliness he experienced at the absence of his friends caused him to declare his seventh visit to Malta in 1866 as his last.