Fine Feathers and Mr Lear

Many would agree that Edward Lear (1812-1888) is best known for his delightful poem The Owl and the Pussycat. What many do not know is that he was an incredibly skilled self-taught artist producing thousands of diverse images including exquisite ornithological drawings, paintings and prints. Sir David Attenborough is a great admirer and collector of Lear’s Ornithological work and has said “he did it as well as anybody, and some say he did it better than anybody.” (1)

Orange-winged Lorikeet (detail) - Edward Lear (1835-1836)
Graphite and Watercolour, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

The Victorians were fascinated with the natural world and Lear’s interest and talent in this realm was apparent early on. At age 20 to showcase his work, the ambitious young artist produced a collection of 175 A2 hand-coloured lithographs to be sold to subscribers and later bound into a book.(2) This large folio of natural sized images, Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots was printed between 1830 and 1832. It was one of the first folios ever produced of this large size. Audubon, another naturalist artist was working on his Birds of America around the same time.(3)

As inspiration for the folio Lear “sketched live specimens and bird skins.” (4)  He particularly spent an enormous amount of time at the London Zoo whereby he caught the eye of John Gould, the principal curator and taxidermist. After two years, Lear’s entrepreneurial folio endeavour was a financial failure and it was Gould who took control of the work and sold the remainder of Lear’s lithographic ornithological stock.

Red and Yellow Maccaw (detail) - Edward Lear (1830-1832)
Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots
Hand-coloured Lithographic Print, Houghton Library, Harvard

It was during his time drawing, painting and communing with parrots in the cages at the London Zoo that Lear’s work came to the attention of Edward Smith-Stanley, who later became the 13th Earl of Derby of Knowsley Hall (1834). Lord Stanley at the time was president of the Linnean Society (1828 – 1834) and the Zoological Society of London (1831-1851); he was very well connected within scientific circles and extremely influential. On his own estate he also had a private menagerie and an aviary larger and of greater importance than the London Zoo. (5)

Lord Stanley, commissioned the artist to produce illustrations of his menagerie (possibly the finest in the country) which included 318 species of birds, 94 species of mammals, fishes, reptiles and eggs. Lear worked on the Knowsley estate for many years. (6)

Tocu Toucan (Ramphostos Toco)
as collected by the Earl of Derby (7)
Edward Lear (1836) Watercolour

It was at Knowsley Hall that Lear’s nonsensical works began to develop as entertainment for the Lord Stanley’s (later Lord Derby’s) grandchildren and their cousins along with aristocratic guests’ children and sometimes the guests themselves as this quote attests:                    

                        One visitor attributed Lear’s invitation to the family dinner table not a
                        nervous, kindly gesture of Lord Derby, but to his grandsons’ insistence
                        on speeding away from the dining room because it was ‘so much more
                        amusing downstairs’. Why? ‘Oh, because that young fellow in the
                        steward’s room who is drawing the birds for you is such good company
                        and we like to go and hear him talk’ So Lear, allegedly, was summoned
                        upstairs, to make the adults laugh too. (8)

Eventually a collection of nonsense poems and drawings were produced and coming to light in 1846 as A Book of Nonsense. The Owl and the Pussy-cat poem came later and was first published in a subsequent book in Lear’s Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets (1871). Between 1846 and 1871 and beyond, Lear was also traveling, painting, writing and illustrating other books including several travel journals such as Journal of a Landscape Painter in Southern Calabria (1852) and Journal of a Landscape Painter in Corsica (1870). (9)

Lear had extraordinary creative talent. I’ll take leave with a return to Mr Lear’s feathered friends in a form one may be more familiar with, three limericks from A Book of Nonsense:

Thank you for reading,

Kate J

(1) Higgins, C, 2012. Attenborough’s Treasured Lear bird prints reproduced for Folio Society, The Guardian, 24 October, https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2012/oct/24/attenborough-lear-bird-prints-book (Accessed 17 June 2023).
(2) Antiques Boutique, 2023. Edward Lear. https://www.antiquesboutique.com/antique-drawings/edward-lear---superb-set-of-six-hand-coloured-lithographs-of-parrots-/itm113658 (Accessed 19 June).
(3) & (7) Hyman S, 1980. Edward Lear’s Birds, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London.
(4) Metropolitan Museum, 2023. Eclectus Roratus, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/363843 (Accessed 17 June 2023).
(5) Peck, R M, 2016. The Natural History of Edward Lear, David R. Godine, Boston.
(6) Prescot Museum. Edward Lear and Knowsley Hall. https://www.prescotmuseum.org.uk/information/ (Accessed 17 June 2023).
(8) Uglow, J., 2017. Mr Lear A Life of Art and Nonsense, Faber and Faber, London.
Noakes, V., 1991. The Painter Edward Lear, David & Charles, London.

For further information...
Abbott Hall has several watercolours and drawings by Edward Lear created during his tour of Cumberland in 1836.
https://www.mutualart.com/Exhibition/Display---Around-the-Lakes-with-Edward-L/71499EFC72DA084C

The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has 164 Lear letters, drawings and paintings. You can book an appointment in the print room to get up close and personal. I’ve done this. A very special experience.
https://collections.ashmolean.org/collection/search

The Harvard Houghton Library has thousands of Lear’s original creative works. There are around two hundred natural history sketches, studies and finished paintings with around one hundred bird sketches, watercolours and prints of birds relating to Illustrations of the family of Psittacidae, or parrots (1832).
https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/24/resources/3385/digital_only#