#edward lear

[histsciart]

Your Monday Motivation Owl

Where did the weekend go? This barn owl will help you look.

This lovely illustration was done by Edward Lear for John Gould's Birds of Europe, Vol. 1 (1837).

View more Monday Motivation Owl posts and illustrations.

View more bird posts and illustrations.

[bottegapowerpoint]

Edward Lear, Porto Tre Scoglie, Albania (1862)

[thestuffedalligator]

Always thinking about Edward Lear. Fascinating man. Painted parrots. Popularized the limerick. Epileptic and almost definitely queer by modern standards. Loved his tabby cat and it was rumoured that he had a perfect copy of his house built when he moved to Sanremo so the cat wouldn’t be confused. He drew himself like this.

He wrote The Owl and the Pussycat and a poem where he described himself as “ill-tempered and queer,” and “perfectly spherical.” I feel like I’ve met several men like this in my life.

[wallflowerstudio]

Formally named Aderphos, Foss was the pet cat of Edward Lear, 19th-century author, artist, illustrator and poet. ca 1892

Foss depicted by Lear in an 1879 letter.

[paintingafterpainting]

Edward Lear

Masada (or Sebbeh) on the Dead Sea,

1858

[subnitida]

Jinglia tinkettlia, Edward Lear’s Nonsense Botany (1871–77)

[mioritic]

Edward Lear (English, 1812–1888)

Illustrations for an alphabet book made for the children of Vandeleur Benjamin Crake, 1857

Yale Center for British Art

[explore-blog]

Edward Lear's Parrots

Is It Not Wonderful to Be Alive: Edward Lear’s Parrots

In the late summer of 1832, England was set aflame with wonder — a glimpse of something wild and flamboyant, shimmering with the lush firstn

Every artist’s art is their coping mechanism for being alive. Birds were not just an aesthetic passion for Edward Lear. “A deep black bitter melancholy destroys me,” he wrote in his journal. He painted what he saw in order to keep looking out. All melancholy is a stranglehold of selfing. All joy is a surrender to something larger than oneself. In nature, in wildness, Lear came unselved, so that he could gasp in his journal after a day of walking in the forest and sketching: “Is it not wonderful to be alive?”

Edward Lear's Parrots