Despite the inscription on the reverse, this watercolour seems to show a scene on the island of Euboea, whereas Philates (Filiates)lies on the mainland facing Corfu. Lear used the composition for one of the watercolours of the mid 1880s illustrating the poems of Tennyson, in this case the line 'They sat them down upon the yellow sand' from The Lotus Eaters; as well as the quotation from Tennyson, the mount inscribed 'Euboca Greece' (no. 51 of the series: repr. R. Pitman, Edward Lear's Tennyson, 1988, p. 93). Lear was on Euboea, north of Athens, in the summer of 1848, before visiting Constantinople and then making his first trip to Albania. He wrote to his sister Ann on 19 July 1842 from Athens that 'From Chaleis we made a tour of a week all over Euboea: no such beautiful scenery can be found anywhere as the forests: you ride for days & days through whispering woods of bright green pine, - the odour of which is delightful & the branches are full of bright blue rollers. It is more like a magnificent English park than anything else I can compare it to' (V. Noakes, ed., Edward Lear: Selected Letters, 1988, p. 80, and Pitman, op.cit., p. 94). This watercolour probably shows the river valley behind Chalkis looking towards Mount Firfis