Lear lived on Corfu in the Ionian Islands for long periods between 1856 and 1864. He called the island ‘the loveliest place in the world’. This watercolour is dated 10 May 1862. Lear wrote in his journal that day ‘there is everywhere a flood of gold and green and blue… Just now the lilac range of Albanian mountains with the few pale but defined clouds, the blue sky and the far deeper blue sea, the long almost blue plain of distant olives, and the still dark berryful cypresses close by – all bring back old memories’. Lefkími is in the south of Corfu.