Edward Lear (1812–1888), View of the Forest of Valdoniello, Corsica
, Watercolor, heightened with white tempera, over some pencil, including 12 vertical, equally spaced ruled lines, on gray wove paper mounted by the artist on pasteboard, Purchased as the gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Salomon
, 1977.19
Lear left for Corsica on 8 April 1868, traveling with the writer John Addington Symonds (1840–1893), and completed his tour on 6 June 1868. By 9 May, Lear had decided to visit the great Corsican forests of Aïtone, Valdoniello, and Vico, and by the twelfth of that month he was in Valdoniello. The artist's journey was documented with illustrations in his last travel book, Journal of a Landscape Painter in Corsica, published in 1870. Lear's dramatic watercolor of Valdoniello is close to an illustration in the book and is also related to a painting in the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.