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Edward Lear was perhaps the last
of the great topographers. He called his watercolours and oils his ‘topographies’.
Between trips Lear lived mostly in Italy,
and spent his last seventeen years on the Riviera
at San Remo, where he died.
He wrote from Rome to his sister Ann, in May 1838, around the time this work was painted: ‘every now and then you see bits of ancient villas – all that is left of once vast buildings – now only a few arches with the curious Roman brick work – covered with large aloes – or roofs of olives.’
Gallery label, August 2004
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