Confirming the rule that the funniest of men are troubled melancholics in their private life, the eccentric Victorian Edward Lear overcame manic depression to write poetry that defined the term nonsense verse. Drawing on his experiences as a zoological draughtsman, his fabulous
creations have long outlasted the era in which they were made. But, while the owl and the pussy-cat are immortal, Lear's bread-and-butter work as a topographical painter remains stiffly of its era, embedded in a colonial yet sentimental world view, peppered with picturesque natives and still mulling over landscapes better described by earlier generations of artist travellers.
These 32 paintings of the eastern Mediterranean have come to the National Gallery of Scotland in lieu of inheritance tax from the estate of Byzantine scholar, adventurer and aesthete Sir Stephen Runciman. They are housed in the gallery's hellish basement, but enlivened by labels which describe his journeys, what wine he drank and where he fell off his horse. They are largely preparatory sketches, loosely yet accurately drawn which, when he has a pen in his hand, occasionally stray into pleasingly elegant graphic territory. They record landscapes in demand from customers at home (including Queen Victoria, who was briefly Lear's pupil) including the site of the battle at Marathon and the Greek Orthodox monastery at Mount Athos. The fusion of word and image in Lear's preparatory works is the most interesting aspect of the show. A large sweep of landscape might be peppered with notes indicating
the flora ''beans, poplar, vineyards''; there is misspelt Greek; and private puns and wordplay. At the mountainous village of Suli, Lear notes the ''dark, grey rox''. Of all landscapes, you sense Lear is at his most enlivened among mountains, despite his delicate health. Perhaps the vertiginous views appealed to a man whose own nature was so precipitous.
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