Lear arrived in Athens on 2 June 1848 and the next day wrote to his sister Ann: ‘… surely never was anything so magnificent as Athens! … the manner in which that huge mass of rock – the Acropolis stands above the modern town with its glittering white marble ruins against the deep blue sky’. This highly finished watercolour shows the Acropolis from the north-west. It was probably worked up from three sketches made in a single afternoon on a return visit in April 1849, now in the collection of the Gennadius Library, Athens.