In 1816 Jeremiah defaulted on the stock exchange, and although a friend paid the debts, the family was split by the financial fall. Edward Lear's sister Ann, twenty-two years his senior, became his virtual mother, and they remained close throughout her lifetime.
In addition to the turmoil of disrupted family life, Lear suffered from epilepsy, a condition he apparently kept secret from all but family members. He had virtually no formal education, a lacuna that Lear regarded as beneficial, because it fostered a more individualistic view of the world--in his case, a view in which humor encompassed both sorrows and joys. Biographer Vivien Noakes finds in the author's surviving juvenalia "a combination of humour with real sadness, and an interdependence of words and pictures."
In the 1820s on visits to his sister Sarah's house near Arundel, Lear met several rich patrons of the arts who influenced his ambition to be a painter. Because Lear was dependent on the small inherited income of his sister Ann, studying art in an academic setting was beyond his means, and at age fifteen he began to help support himself by selling sketches, drawing medical subjects, and teaching art.
This is a free page. This page contains 167 words. This
biography contains 4,921 words (approx. 16 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Edward Lear Access Pass.
