The Artist: Edward Lear grew up under trying circumstances. He was the twentieth of twenty-one children whose father lost his fortune, obliging Edward to leave the family home at age four chaperoned by his eldest sister, Ann, who raised him. He was epileptic and asthmatic, and he suffered from bronchitis and depression. As an artist he was essentially self-taught, displaying considerable gifts as a remarkably prolific topographical draftsman and watercolorist, landscape painter, and author and illustrator of whimsical verse. One aspect or another of his output is apt to find a receptive audience at every stage of life. There is the nimble humor of his literary nonsense, initiated in
A Book of Nonsense (1846), the best known example of which is "The Owl and the Pussycat" ("The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea / In a beautiful pea-green boat, / They took some honey, and plenty of money, / Wrapped up in a five-pound note…."). Then there is the present work, a landscape painting that epitomizes the reliable support from patrons and collectors that enabled Lear to travel extensively throughout the Mediterranean basin and even to the ends of the British Empire at the apogee of its power.
The Subject: This monumental painting depicts Kanchenjunga (sometimes spelled Kinchinjunga or with other variants), which, at 28,169 feet, is the third-tallest peak in the world. The mountain is located in the eastern Himalayas on the border between Sikkim state, northeastern India, and eastern Nepal. The view is from Darjeeling; the right foreground is animated by a group of local figures passing a Buddhist shrine.
Lear in India: Lear traveled to India at the invitation of Lord Baring, 1st Earl of Northbrook (1826–1904), following the Earl's appointment as viceroy.[1] Northbrook’s underwriting of Lear’s travel and the promise of a commission made the journey possible. The artist arrived in Darjeeling in the middle of January 1874. After waiting several days for the fog to lift, he first caught sight of the mountain on January 17. On the 18th, however, as he began to appraise the vista, he wrote, "Kinchinjunga is not, so it seems to me, a sympathetic mountain; it is so far off, so very god-like and stupendous, and all that great world of dark opal valleys full of misty, hardly to be imagined, forms; besides the all but impossibility of expressing the whole as a scene, [they] make up a rather distracting and repelling whole." On the 19th, he was especially impressed: "Kinchinjunga at sunrise is a glory not to be forgotten; Kinchinjunga in the afternoon, is apt to become a wonderful hash of Turneresque colour and mist and space, but with little claim to forming a picture of grand effect." On the 20th, he produced a small pencil drawing washed with watercolor (private collection) that captures the entire view, one of numerous studies he produced on the spot, seventeen of which are in the collection of Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.[2] (For each letter, see Strachey 1911.)
The Painting: Lear’s first impressions, recorded in these drawings and in his delightfully lyrical prose, eventually yielded multiple versions of the present scene in oil and in watercolor. He began these works in his studio at San Remo, on the Ligurian coast of Italy, in September 1875. In addition to the canvas painted for Northbrook, one was ordered by Henry Austin Bruce, 1st Baron Aberdare (1815–1895). Another version, the present work, was ordered by Louisa, Lady Ashburton (1827–1903), between January 1874 and June 1875. Completed by May 1877, when the artist showed it in his studio at 8 Duchess Street, Portland Place, London, it is the largest of four known variants of
Mount Kanchenjunga from Darjeeling. In a letter to Chichester Fortescue, Lord Carlingford (1823–1898), dated San Remo, October 18, 1875, Lear had written:
"There will be no one here this winter I care for—
nobody. En revanche, I go into HARD WORK—Louisa Lady A[shburton’s] and Lord Aberdare’s two paintings of Kunchinjunga, one 9 ft. by 4—the latter 6 ft. by 3 ft. 6 in,—both immortal subjects. If Henry Bruce’s picture comes to be at all what I shall try for, nobody will ever eat anything at his table—along of contemplating it; and if L[ouisa]. Lady A’s picture thrives equally, then I foresee no English child will ever be henceforth christened otherwise than ‘Kunchinjunga.’"
Lear’s colorful patron for the present work, Lady Ashburton, had a fascinating and diverse collection of paintings, a number them in The Met’s collection: Crivelli’s
Saint Dominic and
Saint George (The Met
05.41.1 and
05.41.2), Rubens’s
Wolf and Fox Hunt (The Met
10.73), and Landseer’s copy after the Rubens (The Met
1990.75).
An American Connection: Apart from sketches produced in India and his recollections of the prospect, there is another model that Lear relied on for inspiration as he painted the present work and its variants. In a letter to American publisher James T. Fields (1817–1881) dated January 18, 1880, Lear wrote: "Church the Landscape painter . . . I consider the greatest Landscape Painter after Turner;—& one of his works, ‘The Heart of the Andes’ hangs always before me . . . ." Clearly, Lear owned an engraving of Frederic Edwin Church’s
Heart of the Andes (The Met
09.95), which was painted in 1859 and exhibited the same year in London.
The Frame: The original frame bears the title, KINCHINJUNGA FROM DARJEELING as well as the artist’s name and dates, EDWARD LEAR 1874–1877; dimensions: 95 1/2 in. x 11 ft. 3 3/4 in. x 4 1/2 in. (242.6 x 344.8 x 11.4 cm).
Related Works: (variations in spelling per respective institutions and publications) A comprehensive group of dozens of plein-air studies made on location in India, including seventeen that served as the raw material for the present work, are at Houghton Library, Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, repository of thousands of drawings and watercolors by Lear.
Kinchinjunga, Darjeeling, India. Pencil and watercolor with touches of white heightening on paper, 6 1/2 x 10 1/4 in. Signed with monogram; inscribed and numbered on the original mount: 10. Earl of Derby / Kinchinjunga. All figures are in the left foreground. Whereabouts unknown (sale, Christie’s, London, April 9, 1991, no. 177).
Kinchinjunga from Darjeeling, Himalayas. Pencil, pen and ink, and watercolor heightened with bodycolor, 9 1/2 x 15 3/8 in. (24.1 39.1 cm). Signed with monogram and dated 1875. Private collection, New York (in 2019; sale, Christie’s, London, October 5, 1999, no. 108). The figures are situated to the right of the ravine, before a Buddhist shrine.
Kanchenjunga. Pencil and watercolor on textured paper, dimensions unknown. Inscribed (at lower edge): Kinchinjunga Juary 20, 1874 / E. Lear. Private collection, New York (in 2019).
Study for Mount Kanchenjunga. Pen and brown ink, approx. 10 x 14 in. (25.4 x 35.6 cm). Inscribed and dated: Brighton July 18, 1875. The Met, New York, Promised Gift of Annette de la Renta, in celebration of the Museum's 150th Anniversary. Includes studies of figures seen in the foreground, with color notations.
Kinchinjunga. Oil on canvas, 9 ½ x 14 ½ in. (24.1 x 36.8 cm). Signed and dated (on stretcher): Kinchinjunga. Edward Lear 1877. Mr. and Mrs. Michael Coe (in 1968); Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, inv. B2009.18. Lacks staffage. Frame has the same anthemion molding as the one on the other version at Yale, painted two years later; both are presumably original to the respective pictures (see fig. 1 above).
Kinchenjunga from Darjeeling. Oil on canvas, 46 x 70 in. (117 x 178 cm). Signed with monogram and dated 1877. Provenance: Henry Austin Bruce, 1st Baron Aberdare (1877–?d. 1895; commissioned in 1873 to support the artist’s prospective voyage to India); his son Henry Campbell Bruce, 2nd Baron Aberdare (by 1895–1924; his gift to Mountain Ash); Mountain Ash Urban District Council, later Cynon Valley Borough Council (aka Rhondda Cynon Taf Council), (1924-2005; sale, Bonham’s, London, May 10, 2005, no. 69, bought in; deposited at National Museum of Wales by Art Fund, 2005-6); National Museum of Wales, Cardiff (inv. NMW A 28349; from 2006). The composition is reversed (fig. 2).
Kangchenjunga from Darjeeling. Oil on canvas, 47 1/8 x 72 in. (119.7 x 182.9 cm). Signed with monogram and dated: EL 1879. Provenance: painted for Lord Baring, 1st Earl of Northbrook, who invited Lear to India after he was appointed Viceroy; Donald Gallup (in 1968); Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, inv. B1997.7.3. The composition is reversed (fig. 3).
Asher Miller 2020
[1] Viceroys represented the interests of the British Empire in designated areas. Domination of the Indian subcontinent by Great Britain began in 1757 and was consolidated with the transfer of power from the East India Company to the British state in 1858, and Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in 1876. India and Pakistan gained independence in 1947; independence for nearby regions, including present-day Myanmar, followed.
[2] Discussions of Lear’s observation of Mount Kanchenjunga from Darjeeling and the commissions for related versions of the present work are reviewed extensively in the literature, including in letters by the artist and his diaries, but only specific references to the present work are cited under References here.
