Edward Lear

Signed with monogram l.r., watercolour over traces of pencil, inscribed on backboard: Lady Peyton /40 Wilton Crescent

10.2 x 20.4 cm.; 4 1/8 x 8 inches, framed size 28 x 37 cm.; 11 x 14 1/2 inches

Provenance
Lady Peyton, 40 Wilton Crescent, London;

The Hon. Dorothy Gibbs, and thence by family descent;

Christie’s, 17 November 2005, lot 103

£5800

In 1837, with financial assistance from his patron, Lord Derby (1775 -1851), the twenty-five-year-old Lear set off for Rome, where he was based for the following decade, which was a formative phase of his artistic development. During the summer months he would travel further afield in Italy, returning to Rome in the winter.

Lear painted an oil sketch of this subject around 1839-1840, see Lady Strachey, The Letters of Edward Lear, 1907, p. 341.

St John Lateran is considered to be the oldest church and Archbasilica in the world, founded by Pope Melchiade in 324 on the ruins of the villa of the Laterani family.