Although now best known for his nonsense verse, such as ‘The Owl and the Pussy-Cat’, Edward Lear was an outstanding landscape artist and travel writer. This dramatic watercolour shows the mountain top castle in the village of Suli in north-western Greece. Lear uses flecks of gouache to accentuate the light catching the rocks in the foreground and illuminate the distant figures. He made several sketches at Suli, from which this watercolour was painted at a later date. The faint grid lines used by Lear to plot the castle from his sketches can just be made out.