1875
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Hardwar, India is a 1875 by Edward Lear, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a river winding through green hills, with tiny white buildings clustered along the bank and people washing clothes in the shallows. Lear traveled for months to reach this spot in India. He sketched on the spot, then turned the drawing into this watercolor back in his studio. The light looks soft, almost misty, like early morning. If you like this quiet way of painting travel scenes, look up the subject England—Lear made many similar works of his home country.
Known for his limericks and nonsense rhymes, such as The Owl and the Pussycat, Edward Lear was primarily a landscape painter. In 1848, he left Europe for extensive explorations to the Mediterranean, the Levant, and Southeast Asia, making drawings of the landscapes along the way. He reached Hardiwar (alt. spelling Hardwar), located northeast of Delhi on the right bank of the Ganges where the river exits the Himalayan foothills, on April 2, 1874. This finished watercolor was made a year after his visit, based on his on-site sketches and assiduous notes. He depicted the vibrant mass of people on…
Describing this site, Edward Lear wrote in his 1874 journal: The beauty of the pagodas and shrines and houses here is indescribable, and the whole scene is perhaps the most beautiful I have seen anywhere in India .
Read the full account in the museum source.
Edward Lear (12 May 1812 – 29 January 1888) was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, who is known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised but which term he never used.
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