Edward Lear

The most important project of Lear’s later years was an ambitious scheme to illustrate the work of his friend, the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92). Lear meant the project as both an act of homage and a summary of his own life’s work. It was never published as he intended, although Lear completed around 300 drawings, matching scenes from his tens of thousands of travel sketches to Tennyson’s verse. This scene of Calcutta, derived from Lear’s extended trip to India in 1873-74, illustrates a line from “Love and Death,” published in 1830:

Death, walking all alone beneath a yew,

And talking to himself, first met his sight:

“You must begone,” said Death, “these walks are mine.”

Love wept and spread his sheeny vans for flight;

Yet ere he parted said, ‘This hour is thine:

Thou art the shadow of life, and as the tree

Stands in the sun and shadows all beneath,

So in the light of great eternity

Life eminent creates the shade of death;

The shadow passeth when the tree shall fall,

But I shall reign for ever over all.