Many of us, who were brought up on a staple diet of absurd poetry in the Native Tongue, were introduced to Edward Lear through Satyajit Ray's translations that appear in Torae Badha Ghorar Dim. (Are there many languages that display a similar inexorable affinity for nonsense verse, in the original and in translation, especially for children?) I knew Edward Lear as a master of the nonsense verse and I'm sure we each know people who can still recite large chunks of 'The Owl and the Pussycat' from memory. My first exposure to his painting was when I was visiting the British Museum a couple of years back. I had vaguely heard about his landscape painting but I hadn't seen too much of it online and people didn't really talk about it all that much.
Recently, while researching English/European painters in Calcutta around the 18th and 19th centuries, I came across his memoirs. During the October Reading Group Seminar for the ETIC project, Abhijit Gupta referred me to Joe Robert's Bengal, the Cold Weather 1873: A Dream of Edward Lear in India. I didn't find the novel particularly stimulating. The author confesses his love for Edward Lear in the introduction and I think I would have liked to see a work driven by more imagination and less obedience to the journal. A meeting between Lear and a young Toru Dutt is an exciting thought, but apart from a few witty exchanges it didn't do much for the narrative, I felt. It is, in the author's defence, presented as a dream. I wish it were livelier and more confident of itself. Be that as it may.
Edward Lear came in 1873, Chandernagore being his last stop before Calcutta. He had with him a young Italian boy, Giorgio. He seems to be quite fond of him. Lear stayed at the Governor's House. The Viceroy at the time was Lord Northbrook. Lear was reading G.O. Trevelyan's Cawnpore, a narrative of the revolt of 1857.
As expected, Lear had funny names for the places he visited, and from what I read, I could detect a bit of good-humoured contempt for the officious lifestyle of his fellow countrymen in India. The Chowringhee, for instance, did not suit him. He describes it as "a road of palaces and a fearful humbug. The Promenades des Anglais at Nice beats it hollow." His name for Calcutta was "Husslefussabad" and a stretch leading up to Tollygunge (I can't pinpoint where exactly) is named "Moscopolis".
During his stay Lear went on drawing a steady pace. The city, however, seems not to have appealed to his artistic sensibilities. "Immense commerce and population of Calcutta ghats—for which I was not prepared", he writes on December 27. (That same night he was to enter some lady's room by mistake, thinking it his. "Great fuss thereanent.") He far preferred the 'suburbs'—Tollygunge for instance, with which he seems quite happy. "Drove to Tollygunge. Beautiful bits of villages and verdure; I do not think I ever before saw so much novel, interesting, and drawable stuff in so small a space and so short a time." December 23.
Lear, as many are aware, was also a bird-watcher. He makes some notes of a few of the birds that he saw around the city: "Several small green bee-eaters, and at Tollygunje, a largish, green bird with red and blue about head, on top of a tree; seemed a big woodpecker, only sate still on the very top of a tree, a habit non-woodpeckerish, and making an odd noise." December 31. He searched high and low for a bridge he intended to paint and found it after much effort that same day.
On December 26 he ordered a sketching-stool. It arrived on New Year's Day, 1874 and broke on January 5. He notes, "I very ill, along of the new sketching stool having broken down under me, and hurt my behind very badly." Poor fellow. He was about 62 then. He also bought several photographs while he was here—two dozen at Thacker & Spinks alone.
What I also didn't know about him: I came to learn from the introduction by Ray Murphy, is that Lear was fairly close to the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. One William Holman Hunt visited his studio and "ended by agreeing to be his adviser". Hunt was junior to Lear. Lear, nevertheless, called him "Daddy". Murphy argues that this influence did more harm than good, because, according to him, "much of the poetry implicit in this early work evaporated and was replaced by a sickly blight of strained effects, search for novelty, interest in what was merely picturesque, and false sentimentality..." (ELIJ, 23) He notes that Lear would have liked to be remembered more for his painting than for his verse. Murphy refers to this one occasion when Lear had written to an aged Ruskin in 1883 thanking him "for having, by your books, caused me to use my own eyes in looking at landscape from a period dating many years back." The ageing man apparently scribbled at the top of the letter, "Is this the Nonsense man?"
There are only two paintings by Lear from his Calcutta trip that I could find. Both set in Tollygunge. The second one, which went under the hammer at Christie's in 2011, seems the better (more skilled) of the two, yes? His diary is worth a read. For those interested, Marco's Edward Lear's Diaries blog is an interesting re-presentation of the same.
Recently, while researching English/European painters in Calcutta around the 18th and 19th centuries, I came across his memoirs. During the October Reading Group Seminar for the ETIC project, Abhijit Gupta referred me to Joe Robert's Bengal, the Cold Weather 1873: A Dream of Edward Lear in India. I didn't find the novel particularly stimulating. The author confesses his love for Edward Lear in the introduction and I think I would have liked to see a work driven by more imagination and less obedience to the journal. A meeting between Lear and a young Toru Dutt is an exciting thought, but apart from a few witty exchanges it didn't do much for the narrative, I felt. It is, in the author's defence, presented as a dream. I wish it were livelier and more confident of itself. Be that as it may.
Edward Lear came in 1873, Chandernagore being his last stop before Calcutta. He had with him a young Italian boy, Giorgio. He seems to be quite fond of him. Lear stayed at the Governor's House. The Viceroy at the time was Lord Northbrook. Lear was reading G.O. Trevelyan's Cawnpore, a narrative of the revolt of 1857.
As expected, Lear had funny names for the places he visited, and from what I read, I could detect a bit of good-humoured contempt for the officious lifestyle of his fellow countrymen in India. The Chowringhee, for instance, did not suit him. He describes it as "a road of palaces and a fearful humbug. The Promenades des Anglais at Nice beats it hollow." His name for Calcutta was "Husslefussabad" and a stretch leading up to Tollygunge (I can't pinpoint where exactly) is named "Moscopolis".
During his stay Lear went on drawing a steady pace. The city, however, seems not to have appealed to his artistic sensibilities. "Immense commerce and population of Calcutta ghats—for which I was not prepared", he writes on December 27. (That same night he was to enter some lady's room by mistake, thinking it his. "Great fuss thereanent.") He far preferred the 'suburbs'—Tollygunge for instance, with which he seems quite happy. "Drove to Tollygunge. Beautiful bits of villages and verdure; I do not think I ever before saw so much novel, interesting, and drawable stuff in so small a space and so short a time." December 23.
Lear, as many are aware, was also a bird-watcher. He makes some notes of a few of the birds that he saw around the city: "Several small green bee-eaters, and at Tollygunje, a largish, green bird with red and blue about head, on top of a tree; seemed a big woodpecker, only sate still on the very top of a tree, a habit non-woodpeckerish, and making an odd noise." December 31. He searched high and low for a bridge he intended to paint and found it after much effort that same day.
On December 26 he ordered a sketching-stool. It arrived on New Year's Day, 1874 and broke on January 5. He notes, "I very ill, along of the new sketching stool having broken down under me, and hurt my behind very badly." Poor fellow. He was about 62 then. He also bought several photographs while he was here—two dozen at Thacker & Spinks alone.
What I also didn't know about him: I came to learn from the introduction by Ray Murphy, is that Lear was fairly close to the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. One William Holman Hunt visited his studio and "ended by agreeing to be his adviser". Hunt was junior to Lear. Lear, nevertheless, called him "Daddy". Murphy argues that this influence did more harm than good, because, according to him, "much of the poetry implicit in this early work evaporated and was replaced by a sickly blight of strained effects, search for novelty, interest in what was merely picturesque, and false sentimentality..." (ELIJ, 23) He notes that Lear would have liked to be remembered more for his painting than for his verse. Murphy refers to this one occasion when Lear had written to an aged Ruskin in 1883 thanking him "for having, by your books, caused me to use my own eyes in looking at landscape from a period dating many years back." The ageing man apparently scribbled at the top of the letter, "Is this the Nonsense man?"
There are only two paintings by Lear from his Calcutta trip that I could find. Both set in Tollygunge. The second one, which went under the hammer at Christie's in 2011, seems the better (more skilled) of the two, yes? His diary is worth a read. For those interested, Marco's Edward Lear's Diaries blog is an interesting re-presentation of the same.
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| Edward Lear, Tollygunje. Wikimedia Commons. |
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| Edward Lear, Figures on the Banks of the Hoogly, Tollygunge, Calcutta. |
Lovely article!
ReplyDelete"a largish, green bird with red and blue about head, on top of a tree; seemed a big woodpecker, only sate still on the very top of a tree, a habit non-woodpeckerish, and making an odd noise" can only describe a Blue throated Barbet.
Here is the 'odd sound' he heard - http://www.xeno-canto.org/species/Megalaima-asiatica
Thank you! A few days back when I was reading up on Lear, Anushka told me that you had been telling her about Lear and his sketches of animals of various shapes and sizes. Thanks also for the link: I have to say I have heard that call too, but I didn't know what it came from. Great to be able to hear it.
ReplyDeleteFancy running into you here!!
ReplyDelete