Palazzo Falson in Mdina, run by Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti, is the venue of an exhibition show-casing exquisite watercolours which Victorian artist Edward Lear painted during his visits to Malta in the second half of the 19th century.

Lear is known to have produced over 300 coloured landscape drawings of these islands which, together with all his other artwork, have today come to represent greatly prized collectors’ items.

Of these, only a few have remained or have returned to Malta and only eight are in our national collection.

The well-known US art scholar John Varriano offered to curate a sample exhibition of Lear’s more significant Maltese works.

As with all Palazzo Falson’s exhibitions, the starting point is an item within the museum’s collections, in this case a splendid watercolour of Fomm ir-Riħ that Lear painted in 1866 during his final and longest sojourn on the Island.

This exhibition, titled Edward Lear: Watercolours and Words, combines 21 Maltese works by this highly lyrical artist in a unique setting, side by side with Lear’s unpublished diary entries relating to that particular image.

Lear, bizarre in his lifestyle and in his writings, created some of the most ethereal, poetic and elegantly understated imaging of Malta ever to be seen. The setting of the exhibits, designed by Michael Lowell, does - justice to the muted refinement of the works it supports.

To go hand in hand with the exhibition, Patrimonju has also produced the book Edward Lear in Malta, also by Varriano, who transcribed for the first time all the entries in Lear’s diaries during his visits and stays in Malta.

These diaries, which are housed at the Houghton Library within Harvard University, chronicle this artist’s moods and feelings: intimate, poignant, reflective and humorous.

Besides the diary transcriptions, Varriano provides an overview of all Lear’s works related to Malta and the artist’s life on the Island.

Edward Lear: Watercolours and Words runs until January 4 at Palazzo Falson, Mdina.