Corfu

Lear first visited Corfu in 1848, and made it his home for several winters between 1855 and 1864,  when British rule came to an end. This page lists all Lear’s visits to Corfu, with links to relevant publications.

• April–May 1848 (also visiting  three of the other Ionian Islands)
  
• December 1848–January 1849
• November 1855–June 1856
• January–May 1857

• November 1857–March 1858

• June–August 1858

• April–May 1862
• November 1862–April 1863
  
• January–April 1864
• 1866, 1877

It is hard to estimate the number of Lear’s drawings and watercolour sketches of Corfu: there were at least 300.  He also made studio watercolours and oil paintings, and included four Corfu scenes in his pen and ink illustrations to the poems of Tennyson.  He lithographed nine of the Corfu drawings (plates 1-8 and title page vignette) for his Views in the Seven Ionian Islands (London: privately printed, 1863).

A selection of Lear’s letters and drawings from 1855, and of his diary entries from 1858, relating to Corfu are published in Edward Lear: The Corfu Years. Edited by Philip Sherrard. (Athens: Denise Harvey & Co, 1988).

April–May 1862: Corfu

Numbered series 1–102.

November 1862–April 1863

Unnumbered series.

January–April 1864: Corfu

Number of sketches unknown (fewer than 50).

Lear wrote in his diary on Sunday 24 July 1864:

‘It comes over me at times that the “old times,[”] are all gone: ― no more Corfu ― no more Greece: no more light’.

He was, however, to make brief visits in 1866 and 1877.