Amada, 9:30 am, 12 February 1867

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Artist: Edward Lear (British, 1812–1888)
Medium: Watercolor, pen and brown ink, and graphite on thick, rough, cream wove paper
Size: Sheet: 4 7/8 x 13 3/4 inches (12.4 x 34.9 cm)
Museum: Yale Center for British Art
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

Edward Lear is best known today for his nonsense verse, but he was also a professional travel artist. Amada, painted during a tour of Egypt in 1867, is one of a series of views of the ruined temple made on the morning of February 12th. Lear arrived early to avoid the midday Egyptian heat and made a sequence of sketches of the site from different angles, each one carefully inscribed with the date, time, and its number in the sequence. This view was taken at 9:3o a.m., but other drawings in the series show he was working from at least as early as 6:5o a.m. From the times inscribed on these watercolors, we know that Lear was giving himself around five minutes per sketch before shifting position to draw another view of the site.

Text: Yale Center for British Art.