297. EDWARD LEAR (1812-1888). THEBES.

Inscribed and dated 'Thebes.July 4.1848', also inscribed and dated 'Thebes/4 July 1848', inscribed with artist's notes, pen and ink and watercolour heightened with white
23 x 42.5cm.

Provenance: London, Spink & Sons Ltd; Private Collection, USA; Private Collection, London

* Lear visited Egypt four times: 1848, 1853, 1854 and 1866-7. In a letter to his friend Chichester Fortescue, Lord Carlingford, in 1849, Lear was exuberant: 'I strongly long to go to Egypt for the next winter as ever is, if so be as I can find a sufficiency of time to allow of my passing 4 or 5 months there. I am quite crazy about Memphis & On & Isis & crocodiles and ophthalmia & nubians, and simooms & sorcerers & sphingidoe. Seriously the contemplation of Egypt must fill the mind, the artistic mind I mean, with great food for the rumination of long years.' (Lady Strachey, The Letters of Edward Lear, London, 1907, pp. 8-9.)