The Ruins at Baalbek

Artist Edward Lear (English, 1812 - 1888)

Date1860

MediumPen, ink, and watercolor wash on paper

DimensionsUnframed: 10 15/16 x 7 7/16 inches (27.76 x 18.85 cm)
Mount: 16 11/16 x 22 7/8 inches (42.39 x 58.1 cm)
Framed: 19 x 25 x 1 inches (48.26 x 63.5 x 2.54 cm)

Credit LineBequest of Milton McGreevy

Object number81-30/38

On View

Not on view

Collections

European Art

Terms

Exhibition History

Drawings Collection of Milton McGreevy, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, March 7-April 4, 1965, no. 102, as Baalbek.

Gallery Label

A draftsman, painter, author and adventurer, Edward Lear took many long trips over the course of his life, often to remote and dangerous places. The Ruins at Baalbek is a picturesque view of the magnificent Roman ruins at Baalbek in Lebanon that he visited in 1858. Typical of Romantic landscapes, the presence of a small figure in the right foreground emphasizes the smallness of man before the vastness of nature and time. During Lear’s travels he made thousands of sketches of the various landscapes he encountered that later served as studies for finished paintings like this.

Provenance

Reverend John E. Cools;

Purchased from Durlacher Brothers, New York, by Milton McGreevy (1903-1980), Shawnee Mission, KS, 1960-1980;

Bequeathed by Milton McGreevy to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1981.

Published References

“Drawings Collection of Milton McGreevy,” Bulletin (The Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum) 6, no. 4 (March 7-April 4, 1965): 48, as Baalbek.

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 203, (repro.), as The Ruins at Baalbek.

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 115, (repro.), as The Ruins at Baalbek.

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