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Lot Essay
Lear visited Constantinople, already officially called Istanbul, in 1848 as the guest of Lady Canning, the wife of the British Ambassador in Turkey, setting off from Corfu with the Cannings on 30 May 1848 and travelling by way of Athens where he fell ill. He arrived in Constantinople on 1 August but fell ill again and was cared for by Lady Canning in the British Ambassador's summer residence at Therapia, finally settling at the Hotel d'Angleterre in Pera, the European quarter of Istanbul, on 1 September. He used the hotel as a base and set about exploring the city and the Bosphorus and buying silks and exotic local delicacies. (For Lear's sojourn in Istanbul, see S. Hyman, Edward Lear in the Levant, London, 1988, pp. 54-62).
On 4 September he visited the cemetery of Eyub or Ayoub, situated just outside Constantinople rising on a hill overlooking the city. The cemetery began as the burial place of Mohamed's friend and standard bearer, Ayoub, who was killed during the first siege of Constantinople in 670. After the Fourth Crusade and the sack of Constantinople, at the beginning of the 13th Century, the grave was lost. When it was rediscovered, a tomb was built over it and it became a sacred place. During the Ottoman Empire, after the discovery of the tomb, many significant people chose to be buried here, with less exalted people being interred higher up the hill. By the time Lear was there it was a vast site of tumbling funery monuments. The Turks call the cemeteries 'fields of the dead', but they are not the melancholy places we think of. Rather, they are places of spiritual calm and tranquillity where people walk, or sit beneath the shade of the trees, or even picnic. The rather unkept and chaotic look with the leaning tombstones which seem almost to merge into the ground, is intended to demonstrate the benign power of nature as it reclaims its dead.
Lear describes Istanbul to his sister Anne in a letter dated 12 August 1848 (V. Noakes, Edward Lear: The Life of a Wanderer, London, 1968, pp. 68-71) 'Certainly- no city is so wonderfully beautiful when you approach it- it was far beyond my idea... ruined walls, immense domes- brilliantly white minarets & all mixed with such magnificent cypress, pine & plane foliage is truly wonderful'. Of the cemetery he writes 'The view of the whole city and Golden Horn from the cemetery above Ayoub's burial place amazes and delights me. The effect of the whole panorama as the sun sets is like a glorious vision'.
The present drawing is the basis of an oil painting Lear did of the cemetery for A. De Vere Beauclerk in 1858. The painting was bought for £100.
On 4 September he visited the cemetery of Eyub or Ayoub, situated just outside Constantinople rising on a hill overlooking the city. The cemetery began as the burial place of Mohamed's friend and standard bearer, Ayoub, who was killed during the first siege of Constantinople in 670. After the Fourth Crusade and the sack of Constantinople, at the beginning of the 13th Century, the grave was lost. When it was rediscovered, a tomb was built over it and it became a sacred place. During the Ottoman Empire, after the discovery of the tomb, many significant people chose to be buried here, with less exalted people being interred higher up the hill. By the time Lear was there it was a vast site of tumbling funery monuments. The Turks call the cemeteries 'fields of the dead', but they are not the melancholy places we think of. Rather, they are places of spiritual calm and tranquillity where people walk, or sit beneath the shade of the trees, or even picnic. The rather unkept and chaotic look with the leaning tombstones which seem almost to merge into the ground, is intended to demonstrate the benign power of nature as it reclaims its dead.
Lear describes Istanbul to his sister Anne in a letter dated 12 August 1848 (V. Noakes, Edward Lear: The Life of a Wanderer, London, 1968, pp. 68-71) 'Certainly- no city is so wonderfully beautiful when you approach it- it was far beyond my idea... ruined walls, immense domes- brilliantly white minarets & all mixed with such magnificent cypress, pine & plane foliage is truly wonderful'. Of the cemetery he writes 'The view of the whole city and Golden Horn from the cemetery above Ayoub's burial place amazes and delights me. The effect of the whole panorama as the sun sets is like a glorious vision'.
The present drawing is the basis of an oil painting Lear did of the cemetery for A. De Vere Beauclerk in 1858. The painting was bought for £100.