Edward Lear in Malta

In this book, the well-known US art scholar Prof. John Varriano provides an overview of all Lear’s works related to Malta and the artist's life on the Island. He has also transcribed for the first time all the entries in Lear’s diaries during his visits and stays in Malta. These diaries, which are housed at the Houghton Library within Harvard University, chronicle this artist's moods and feelings: intimate, poignant, reflective and humorous.

This publication complements the exhibition 'Edward Lear: Watercolours and Words' at Palazzo Falson in Mdina which, as with all this museum's exhibitions, takes as a starting point an item within its collections, in this case a splendid watercolour of Fomm ir-Riħ that Lear painted in 1866 during his final and longest sojourn on the Island. The exhibition brings together twenty-one Maltese works by this highly lyrical artist in a unique setting, side by side with Lear's up-to-now unpublished diary entries relating to that particular image. Lear, bizarre in his lifestyle and in his writings, created some of the most ethereal, poetic and elegantly understated imaging of Malta ever to be seen.

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CONTENTS

Foreword by Nicholas de Piro
Introduction
Diary, Letters and Watercolours
Checklist of Works Painted in Malta
Index