View of Sciacca, Sicily
May 20, 1847
Medium
Pen and brown ink, over graphite
Dimensions
sheet: 13 15/16 x 19 15/16 in. (35.4 x 50.6 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1961
Accession Number
61.214
Art Historical Context
Edward Lear's *View of Sciacca,*, dated May 20, 1847, captures the rugged coastal charm of this Sicilian town during the artist's extensive travels through the Mediterranean. Lear, best known today for his whimsical nonsense poetry and limericks, was also a prolific landscape artist and traveler. In the mid-19th century, journeyed through Italy and Sicily, producing hundreds of topographical sketches that remote vistas with meticulous detail. This drawing reflects the era's growing fascination with the Grand Tour, blending Romantic wanderlust with precise observation of ancient architecture an...
About the Artist
Edward Lear
Edward Lear (1812–1888) was a British artist, illustrator, author, and poet whose creative output ranged from meticulous natural history illustration to landscape painting and the beloved comic verse of his limericks and nonsense poetry. Born in London as the twentieth of twenty-one children, Lear largely educated himself as a draughtsman and began his professional career illustrating parrots for ...