This watercolor was executed during Lear's visit to Crete in 1864. He left Corfu on April 4, travelled via Athens, and arrived at Khania, the chief harbor in the west of Crete, on April 11. Lear's diary describes how in the afternoon he went with his servant Giorgio Cocali and Mr. Guarracino, a young merchant, and the Dutch consul with whom Lear stayed, to a village on the peninsular of Akrotiri at that time called Halepa, two miles east of Khania; this view was presumably taken from near there.
From April 14, Lear stayed in Mr. Guarracino's country house at Halepa, exploring the district. On April 22, the date of this watercolor, Lear rose at 5:30am and visited the monastery at Aghia Triadha. Then, at 7:00am., he set out and recorded: “I drew once or twice more before 10.30, when we reached a spot looking over the bay at Hania...Here we lunched.”
Lear shows one of the tiny Byzantine chapels that are found in the area, noting at the base of the sheet that he received “universal saluting from peasantry.” From April 26 Lear set off west from Halepa, stayed there again from April 30 to May 2, after which he explored to the east as far as Herakleion and Knossos. After returning to Halepa on May 25, he left Crete from Khania on May 31.
Text: J. Paul Getty Trust, CC BY 4.0.
