Lear’s Thermopylae
The year 2020 marked the 2500th anniversary of the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC). Collected here are some of the drawings and paintings Lear made during and after his visit to the site of Thermopylae in June 1848. The images had an unexpected afterlife when they were used by G.B. Grundy in the 1890s in his expeditions to explore the topography of the Battle; he included ten of Lear’s watercolours in The Great Persian War and its Preliminaries: a study of the evidence, literary and topographical
London: John Murray, 1901).
Lear’s Thermopylae drawings are part of a longer journey in Athens, Attica, Euboea and Central Greece where they come between numbers 83 and 105 in the complete series.
The Mountains of Thermopylae, 1852, oil on canvas, 68 x 135 cm. Bristol Museum and Art Gallery.
Lear wrote to W.M. Rossetti: “I know it is quite the best representation of Greek scenery & climate I have yet painted”.
Stylida,
26 [probably 27] June 1848.
Pen and ink and watercolour, 14 x 23.2 cm. Lear number 84.
Private collection.
Mount Oeta and Thermopylae from near Lamia,
26 [probably 27] June 1848.
Pen and brown ink and watercolour,
heightened with white, 25.5 x 45 cm.
Lear number 85.
Private collection.
Thermopylae, n.d.
[?27 June 1848].
Sepia ink, ochre and blue wash on light
tan paper, 15.1 x 38.6 cm.
No Lear number.
Houghton Library, Harvard.
Mount Oeta from Near Lamia,
26 June 1848; reworked 1850.
Private collection.
Thermopylae, Greece, 1848; reworked 1863.
Watercolour and gouache on white paper, 17.7 x 37.2 cm.
Houghton Library, Harvard.
The Spercheius, near Thermopylae,
illustration to Tennyson’s poem “The Palace of Art”.
Black and grey ink with grey wash.
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.
Spercheius, 29 June 1848.
Pencil, pen and ink and watercolour
heightened with white, 18.1 x 29.2 cm. Lear number 100.
Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design.
On the Spercheius near Thermopylae, 30 June 1848; reworked 1850.
Watercolour, sepia ink and Chinese white on brown paper pasted on board,
28.5 x 46.4 cm.
Houghton Library Harvard.
The monogram Lear often used on his later studio watercolours can be seen at the bottom left.
Thermopylae, 1872.
Oil on canvas, 34 x 54 cm.
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
A smaller, later version of the Bristol Art Gallery painting illustrated at the top of the page.
Thermopylae, 30 June 1848.
Pen and ink and watercolour heightened with white on grey paper, 17.5 x 28.5 cm.
Lear number 102.
Private collection.
Thermopylae, hot springs under Mount Kallidromos, n.d. [30 June 1848].
Pen and ink and watercolour heightened with white.
Lear number 103.
Private collection.
Near Vodonitza, 30 June 1848.
Lear number 105.
Private collection.
There was an Old Man
of Thermopylæ
X was King Xerxes
X was King Xerxes
Autograph MS.