President’s Letter
Edward Lear
Edward Lear was an English author and artist. Most people know of him via his nonsense verse. Most readers will be familiar with his poem which begins ‘The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea/in a beautiful pea green boat’. (see Lears drawing below)
He was an accomplished lithographer. He drew and prepared lithographic prints of birds for John Gould’s ‘Birds of Europe’ and ‘Birds of Australia’, although he is rarely given much recognition for this work. However, his master work was a series of lithographic prints of parrots. He published these lithographs in series, intending that they should make up a monograph. This was a work of extraordinary virtuosity, given that he was only a teenager when they were produced. A search in Google ‘Images’ of ‘Edward Lear’s Parrots’ will show you some of them. Like most printmakers, he struggled to make money out of his prints and in the end he gave it up for lack of financial support. This was very sad because he was head and shoulders above all the other bird illustrators of the 19th century and first half of the 20th century. In my opinion, he was much more talented that Audubon and Elizabeth Gould. He would have been startled at the enormous prices now demanded when a volume of the parrot prints comes up for sale at auction.
I became interested in his bird illustrations when I came across them in the 1970s. In the 1980s, whenever I found a good reproduction, I copied them to learn from his drawing technique. Attached is a portion of my copy of Lear’s ‘Eagle Owl’.
Lear’s ambition was to make his living and gain recognition as a landscape painter. His landscapes are pleasing but he never succeeded in his ambition. He was an inveterate traveller and he published several volumes describing his travels. One of them ‘A Landscape Painter in Southern Calabria’ describes his journey around the toe of Italy. This, and his other travel books relating to Albania and Corsica are highly readable even today, and reveal his whimsical sense of humour. He also illustrated his books. ‘Southern Calabria’ is illustrated with lithographs of towns that he visited. One of them is an illustration of ‘Gerace’ which is reproduced below from my copy of this book. In 2009, Sally and I set out to follow in his footsteps in Calabria. We visited Gerace, which is a beautiful hill town frequented by very few tourists, but which has a very comfortable hotel. While there, I had the good fortune to meet one of the descendents of the Scaglione family which provided accommodation to Lear in Gerace in 1848. He is an expert on Edward Lear and has a considerable collection of Lear material. He pointed out to me the room where Lear stayed in his family’s home more than a century and half ago. Lear’s work and Paul Wunderlich’s lithographs fostered my interest and naturally I attended the demonstration weekends organised by PAWA a couple of years ago where we were taught the process of stone lithography.
Until next time, happy printmaking.
Chris Pullin
