Edward Lear

Lear was more than sixty years old when Lord Northbook, viceroy of India, invited him to tour India at his expense. Lear’s immediate reaction upon arriving in Bombay was one of “violent and amazing delight” at the “colours, & costumes, & myriadism of impossible picturesqueness!,” yet Lear made few pictures of the cities or people of India. He instead preferred the more tranquil scenes he found on his long and exhausting journey down the western Malabar coast. In the French protectorate of Mahé, he drew this scene from the vantage point of a ruined fort once belonging to the Sultan Tippoo Sahib. Lear’s host in the region was one Captain Baudry, whose name appears at the bottom center of the drawing.