Beschreibung:

LEAR, EDWARD Fine sequence of autograph letters signed to William Holman Hunt comprising 12 autograph letters signed to William Holman Hunt a fragment of an autograph letter to Hunt and one autograph letter signed WITH A SELF-PORTRAIT to Wilhelm Marstrand 48 pages excluding several integral address labels, various sizes, locations including 15 Stratford Place, Corfu and Villa Tennyson Sanremo, 1 June 1853 to 31 May 1885 AN EXCEPTIONAL SERIES OF PERSONAL LETTERS FROM LEAR TO HIS FRIEND AND ARTISTIC MENTOR, WILLIAM HOLMAN HUNT A FOUNDER OF THE PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD. Edward Lear first met Holman Hunt in 1852 when Lear was aged 40 and Holman Hunt was 25. It was Holman Hunt who was the established artist and Lear who was the artistically uneducated junior. The friendship between the two men would last over three decades until Lear’s death in 1888 with Lear addressing the younger man as “my dear Daddy” or “my dear old Daddy”. Their correspondence is scattered between numerous libraries including the British Library, the John Rylands Library (University of Manchester), the Getty Institute, the Houghton Library (University of Harvard) and the Huntington Library. The current letters are from a private collection: a descendant of Edward Lear’s sister, Sarah Street. The letters discuss many aspects of Lear’s art and views on art. An early letter describes the trials of painting landscapes with live animals (“…I went down to Berkhamstead … but I could not manage the sheep at all. There were very few (10) in a larger paddock – and they ran about like cockroaches. When I had a man to hold them, they kicked up such a row… …but I remember your perseverance, and benefit thereby. I shall buy a sheep and draw all his mussels and boans and have a skellington set up…”) and, from 1855, there is Lear’s insight into the hanging of John Everett Millais’ work at the Royal Academy (“…Millais’ wonderful work was hung so as to do the worst for it. But our friend saw it, and the row and hullabullou he made was stupendous! He forced the three to move it, threatening to resign instantly if they didn’t. No such scene ever was known and you may imagine that Uncle John was not over placid. My opinion of his picture is this – that it is one of the most surprising works of genius in every way…”) There are frequent notes about negotiations over the selling price of his own art (“…if it sells I shall really begin to look upon you as a sort of good genius: and if it don’t I shall equally regard your good nature with the feelings it rationally calls forth…”) and statements about current work (“…I …have since returned to my Swiss Matterhorn picture, which will astonish the world, inasmuch as I manipulated the grass green and the snow white...”) Given that Holman Hunt was Lear’s artistic mentor, there are numerous thoughts from Lear about his own artistic creed (“…It seems to me that my ‘Mission’… is to portray many places. You did a great deal for me in painting, and much more may yet have to come out of me – yet it seems to me that to aim at what requires long application and tax of eyesight is not my duty. And, after all, our talents are not all similar or equal… …You know my inaptness and awkwardness in all outdoor manipulatory artwork: moreover my temper is more irritable and my thumbs stiffer and my eyes worse than of old.”) There are also frequent concerns about his own artistic ability (“…I worry worry worry about this picture. There is so much of it so sloshy. I don’t know what you will say. Yet the whole scene is in reality one of the loveliest on earth, and I don’t know how it is, I have got it too dark and heavy, for with whatever deep effect of light and dark you see olives, there is always a distinct persuasion of their light foliage and wonderful transparency. Then, the foreground changes weekly here – new sorts of vegetation coming out. The real time of the picture is one hour before sunset at the end of February or maybe of March. Then the moun