Tivoli

Lear set out for Italy in the summer of 1837. For most of the next ten years the artist wintered in Rome and toured other parts of Italy during the summer. This visit to Tivoli is referred to by Lear in a letter to his sister Ann dated 3rd May 1838; I, and Uwins and Mr Acland set off on Saturday - staying some days at many beautiful places all (of) which I will tell you about. I must now describe my dear Tivoli as I promised the height of landscape perfection  (V. Noakes, Edward Lear, Selected Letters, Oxford, 1988, p. 41). James Uwins was the nephew of Thomas Uwins R.A. (1782-1857) who lived in Italy from 1823-1831.  James arrived in Rome in 1837 like Lear.  ‘Mr. Acland’, Leopold Dyke Acland, was one of Lear's travelling companions, who, after leaving Tivoli, travelled on to the Bay of Naples in the summer of 1838. Acland joined Lear again for a tour of Sicily in the spring of 1842. Leopold was the son of Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, tenth baronet (1787-1871), a politician and philanthropist who with his wife visited Rome in the winter of 1837 and also patronised Joseph Severn who was friendly with their son Henry, a great friend of John Ruskin.