ALLÁ... JERUSALEM

Christa Zaat

Edward Lear (British artist, illustrator, author and poet) 1812 - 1888
Jerusalem, 1865
oil on canvas
121 x 199.5 cm.
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, United Kingdom

Lear visited Palestine in 1858, and spent a fortnight making careful studies of Jerusalem from the surrounding hills. These formed the basis for five paintings, of which this is the largest and most magnificent. The view is dominated by the Temple Mount with the Dome of the Rock, and the Mount of Olives to the left.

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Lear is known now mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised. His principal areas of work as an artist were threefold: as a draughtsman employed to illustrate birds and animals; making coloured drawings during his journeys, which he reworked later, sometimes as plates for his travel books; as a (minor) illustrator of Alfred Tennyson's poems. As an author, he is known principally for his popular nonsense works, which use real and invented English words.