This site is about Edward Lear's prolific career as a landscape artist and derives from research carried out by Stephen Duckworth and others, notably Rowena Fowler, commencing with preparations for the celebration in 2012 of the 200th anniversary of Lear's birth. Efforts were made to publicise for that occasion all the institutions in Britain, and some worldwide, which held Lear's landscape drawings.
In Lear's lifetime the drawings he made 'on site' during his travels were not for commercial sale, but as a resource in his studio from which he could make finished watercolours and oil paintings, either on commission or speculatively for sale.  He depended on these sales for his living and to enable his future travels.
His first landscape journey was in 1836 in the English Lake District and the last major journey was to India and Ceylon in 1874/75 though he continued to make local excursions from his home in Italy almost until his death in 1888. In the intervening years he spent much time in Italy, Greece and Egypt with many other journeys in the Mediterranean and near East.
The site brings together previously unpublished data on the drawings he made on each of his journeys, shows the resource material already existing and hopefully will provide a basis for further research on his drawings.  In addition it details what is known of how he disposed of much of his large stock of working drawings shortly before his death.

Site compiled by Stephen Duckworth.  March 2024