Goddess, Heroine, Beast: Anna Hyatt Huntington's New York Sculpture, 1902-1936 Goddess, Heroine, Beast: Anna Hyatt Huntington's New York Sculpture, 1902-1936 Multiple Occupancy Common Love, Aesthetics of Becoming Social Forces Visualized: Photography and Scientific Charity, 1900-1920 Edward Koren: The Capricious Line Pictures for Books: Photographs by Thomas Roma Modernism and Iraq The New Acropolis Museum Treasures Rediscovered: Chinese Stone Sculpture from the Sackler Collections at Columbia University Revolutions: A Century of Makonde Masquerade in Mozambique Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York Architecture in Print: Design and Debate in the Soviet Union 1919–1935, Selections from the Collection of Stephen Garmey Guide to Phlamoudhi "Please, teach me..." Rainer Ganahl and the Politics of Learning Restoring Byzantium: The Kariye Camii in Istanbul & the Byzantine Institute Restoration The Troubled Search: The Work of Max Abramovitz Moscow: City, Spectacle, Capital of Photography Reflection: Seven Years in Print—The LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies Jean Fautrier, 1898–1964 Paris as Gameboard: Man Ray's Atgets Arte Povera: Selections from the Sonnabend Collection Architect of Dreams: The Theatrical Vision of Joseph Urban Percival Goodman: Architect, Planner, Teacher, Painter Experiments in the Everyday: Allan Kaprow and Robert Watts—Events, Objects, Documents Brushed Voices: Calligraphy in Contemporary China Mastering McKim's Plan: Columbia's First Century on Morningside Heights Robert Motherwell on Paper Apostles in England: Sir James Thornhill and the Legacy of Raphael's Tapestry Cartoons The Old World Builds the New: The Guastavino Company and the Technology of the Catalan Vault, 1885–1962 The Post-Pre-Raphaelite Print: Etching, Illustration, Reproductive Engraving, & Photography in England in and around the 1860s Unfaded Pageant: Edwin Austin Abbey's Shakespearean Subjects Robert Smithson Unearthed: Drawings, Collages, Writings Victorian Pleasures: American Board and Table Games of the Nineteenth Century from the Liman Collection Impossible Picturesqueness Sexual Difference: Both Sides of the Camera
Impossible Picturesqueness: Edward Lears Indian Watercolours, 1873-1875

Impossible Picturesqueness
Edward Lear's Indian Watercolours, 1873–1875

Vidya Dehejia with an essay by Allen Staley
Columbia University Press, 1989
Distributed by Columbia University Press
8 1/2 x 11in., 122 pp., 71 color illus.
ISBN 0-231-068954-5 | US $25

Edward Lear, best known as a writer of limericks and nonsense verse, was by profession a landscape draughtsman and painter. Traveling through exotic regions such as Calabria, Corsica, Egypt and India, he made sketches from nature, which, upon his return home, he worked up into oil paintings and watercolors for sale and exhibition. Impossible Picturesqueness presents a selection of Lear's Indian watercolors, and documents his journey to India in 1873-75, making ample use of the artist's exuberant and thoughtful journals of his time spent there. Art Historian Staley has written an insightful essay on Lear's life and work, which concludes the book.

Lear was one of the most notable British artists to visit the subcontinent during the Victorian Era. He produced over 2,000 Indian drawings in watercolor and ink. Lear did not publish the journals, which accompany this portfolio, as with previous journeys, yet they are considered some of his finest writings outside of his Nonsense verse.

The book will be of great interest to scholars of British India, Victorian Art, the travel literature of the 19th century, as well as those interested in Edward Lear.