A new exhibition of paintings by the acclaimed 19th century artist and poet Edward Lear opens on Westside this autumn.
Edward Lear: Moment to Moment will run at the Ikon Gallery in Oozells Square, Brindleyplace, from 9 September to 13 November.
The exhibition represents a major coup for the contemporary art gallery as many of the 63 works in the display are being shown for the first time.
The various sketches and watercolours have been borrowed from various private and public collections, including the Yale Center for British Art, Houghton Library at Harvard, the Tate, the Gennadius Library and the Ashmolean Museum.
Moment to Moment is the first exhibition dedicated solely to Lear’s landscape work. It traces the journeys made by Lear, best known for his nonsense poetry and limericks, through Europe, the Middle East and India over many decades.
His artistic output of more than 9,000 pictures ranged from medical illustrations, plants and birds to finished landscape paintings destined for the Royal Academy.
Many of the in-situ depictions of landscapes in Moment to Moment were never intended to be shown publicly.
He regularly numbered the works, noting the place, date, and exact time of day that he drew them. For example, the Ikon will exhibit five successive drawings entitled Amada, 12 February 1867, made at 6.50am, 7.10am, 7.20am, 7.25am and 7.30am of the ancient Egyptian temple in Nubia.
Moment to Moment, which is accompanied by a catalogue, is co-curated by Matthew Bevis, a professor in English Literature at University of Oxford, and Ikon director Jonathan Watkins.
Prof Bevis said: “Lear’s pictures became a way for him to inhabit and question his experience, to live in and beyond the moment. This exhibition offers viewers a chance to take part in a Learical drama played out between the emergent and the ephemeral—and to see how his work speaks from his moment to ours.”
Moment to Moment is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, The Finnis Scott Foundation, and University of Oxford.
For further information about the exhibition, which is free to enter, visit http://ikon-gallery.org or call 0121 248 0708.
Main picture: Amada, 7.10am, © Edward Lear.
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