Best remembered as the author of The Owl and the Pussycat, Lear chiefly aspired to be a successful painter. On his first visit to the Greek island of Corfu in 1848, he as so enchanted that he resided there frequently over the next two decades and painted its vistas more often than any other.

"The whole island is in undulations from the plain where the city is, to the higher hills on to the west side; and all the space is covered with one immense grove of olive trees-so that you see a carpet of wood wherever you look; & the higher you go, the more you see & always the Citadel & the Lake & then the Straits, with the great Albanian mountains beyond."
-Edward Lear