'Corfu, Octr. 12th 1857' (Greece) RMG PZ4696

'Corfu, Octr. 12th 1857' [Greece]
No. 24 in Fanshawe's Baltic and later album, 1843 - 83. Captioned by the artist on the album page below the image, as title. The eleventh of a series of drawings of the Mediterranean fleet's summer cruise, from Malta and back, between 3 June and 7 November 1857. This fine atmospheric watercolour shows the citadel of Corfu at the south end of the island of that name, from the west side and probably in the light of late afternoon and rather changeable weather. In the background rise the mountains of the western mainland of Greece. Writing to has father on the 10th, Fanshawe had reported rain and southerly winds as detaining their further progress to Cepahlonia and Crete (Fanshawe [1904], p. 354).
Corfu is the principal island of the Ionian archipelago, which the British effectively controlled from 1809, when the group was largely taken from French occupation. From 1815 they were a British protectorate, governed from Corfu, and retained for naval reasons against growing Greek disapproval after independence from Turkey in 1830, until handed back to Greece in 1864. The large building among trees in the centre may be the British governor's country house from which (or more likely its grounds) Lieutenant George Mends also did a drawing of the citadel in October 1852 (see PAI0878). Two Greek men, one with a musket and so probably out hunting with their dog, add local colour on the left.

'Corfu, Octr. 12th 1857' [Greece]