Edward Lear was born in a suburb of London in 1812 and was the twentieth child of a couple who came to have twenty. From early childhood he enjoyed a frail, and from fifteen he began to earn a living as an illustrator - "landscape" to be exact, which eventually made him an "enemy painter jury of all painting." It was an unrepentant traveler: he walked, tirelessly, many countries, and felt a special predilection for the Mediterranean light. He died in San Remo (Italy) in 1888.