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First published in Prospect (Issue 198)  

Happy Birthday Edward Lear: 200 Years Of Nature And Nonsense
The Ashmolean Museum, 20th September 2012 - 6th January 2013

Literary conspiracy theorists set a lot of store by pedigree. Last year, Anonymous dusted off the claim that the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare’s plays. Queen Victoria trumps Tennyson (a mere Lord) as the author of ‘In Memoriam.’ Edward Lear tried to quash rumours that it was really his patron the Earl of Derby who wrote his nonsense verse.

It must have been a tempting theory: Lear was known for most of his life as a serious landscape painter, who travelled through the Mediterranean, Egypt and India making sketches. The Ashmolean’s collection includes his oils of the plains of Lombardy, and a sweeping view of the pass of Thermopylae. As a young man, he published a book of watercolours of parrots, which garnered comparisons with Audubon, and had the distinction of being the first collection drawn entirely from nature rather than stuffed birds.

Yet seen alongside his illustrated poems, the idea that they aren’t by the same person seems nonsensical. Even if his “Old Man of Thermopylae / Who never did anything properly” has outlived the majestic scene he painted. 

Photos via Harvard