The Falls of the Kalama, Albania

In the mid-19th century Albania was a relatively unexplored territory by Englishmen, and Lear found it provided an immense wealth of subject matter: 'You have that which is found neither in Greece nor in Italy, a profusion everywhere of the most magnificent foliage recalling the greenness of our own island...You have majestic cliff-girt shores; castle-crowned heights, and gloomy forests; palaces glittering with gilding and paint; mountain passes such as you encounter in the snowy regions in Switzerland...and with all this a crowded variety of costume and pictorial incident such as bewilders and delights an artist at each step he takes' (V. Noakes, The Painter Edward Lear, London, 1991, p. 52). A comparable watercolour of the waterfall was in the collection of Frances, Lady Waldegrave until 14 December 1972.