In his Eclogue (Composed at Cannes in December 9th, 1867), Edward Lear wrote of visions of happiness and travel that he experienced when he saw the orange and lemon trees and how the unexpected weather diminished the happiness experienced there:
What boots it that we orange trees or lemons see,
If we must suffer from such vile inclemency?
So, despite the depression of the weather, the writer of nonsense associated the lemon and the orange trees with foreign climes and their warmth, with ideas of travel.
Edward Lear – Orange trees and Lemon Trees, 3 April 1863 (Public Domain – Full size image download)
To create this image of the fruit trees, with the wonderful warmth of the orange and yellow colours like the sun, Edward Lear chose watercolours with pen in brown ink over graphite on moderately thick, rough, cream wove paper. The fruit is delicately modelled through hatching which suggests shade. Flat colours are used throughout with the hatching imposed upon them to suggest the lighting.
Hatching
If the fruits perhaps suggest space and foreign climes, the idea of travel, this effect is created implicitly through the background with the dark stains of watercolour which almost looks like a map in which the fruits are positioned as the points of the atlas. What we are seeing could be an imaginary place – the place of desires and the imagination which is inspired by thoughts of foreign environments. The journey of the traveller.
Mapping
However, as with the line of verse which references the terrible weather, there is a profound negativity in this image that is associated with the fruits. Through the branches, a network of fruits is splayed across the images which stand in isolation from each other against the white space of the background. Perhaps there is a sense of disconnection. And the idea of negativity that is associated with the white space, the impression of the depression that we know plagued Lear’s life. The futility of travel which creates no connection. The futility of the fruit which does not give pleasure and taste, which cannot create a community. The reward that does not reward.
This is the paradox of the image. The fruits are supposed to be inviting and warm. Travel is supposed to give happiness. In the foreign clime, we are supposed to project our greatest desires and achieve satisfaction. But the message here appears to be that there can only be illusory happiness in life. Because there is no contact and no connection created through our journeys through the world. The fruits are a form of communication: communication is ruptured. The image is perhaps one of total isolation and loneliness, the branching of silence and invisibility – the lack of expression which structures being and the enmeshment in solitude.
Taxonomy
Citrus is a genus in the Rutaceae family composed of flowering trees and shrubs. These plants bear citrus fruits, which encompass, in addition to oranges and lemons, other well-known varieties such as mandarins, grapefruits, pomelos, and limes. Thought native to regions spanning South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Melanesia, and Australia, the genus Citrus boasts a diverse geographical presence. The taxonomy of Citrus is complex because of its long history of natural changes and cultivation. While the Catalogue of Life lists 33 species in total, hundreds have been described creating many synonyms and combinations.
About the Artist
Largely remembered now as a nonsense poet and the writer of ‘The Owl and the Pussy Cat’, at first Edward Lear worked as a zoological draughtsman until he began writing his own limericks with his own illustrations. He travelled widely and often published accounts of the countries that he visited.
Although he had a number of long distance friendships, he is described as mostly living a solitary life. One of his friendships was with the artist Marianne North, who, like Lear, travelled all around the world, although her motivation was to paint exotic plants. Lear became friends with Marianne while painting a fig tree in the home of her father, Frederick North, in the autumn of 1852.