In Focus: Edward Dodwell (1776/7-1832)
Few Englishmen in the early 19th century spent as much time in Greece or knew the topography as well as Edward Dodwell. Trained as an architect, he first visited the country in 1801. Arriving on the island of Corfu after a rough crossing from Venice, he instantly fell in love with Greece. On this first voyage, he travelled from Corfu to Constantiople, stopping at Ithaca, Cephalonia, Patras, Phocis, Boeotia, Athens, and Troy along the way. This first exposure only whetted his appetite and, four years later, he made an extended trip spending close to two years tamping over the Attic and Peloponnesian countryside.
Wherever he travelled, Dodwell was always keen to hear from locals about any recent discoveries of antiquities and some of his most important finds were the product of his local informants. Dodwell seems to have unable to pass an ancient tomb without getting the locals to open it up. His most successful excavations occurred around Corinth where a number of tombs produced extremely fine vases. The most important of these was an early sixth-century pyxis depicting the Calydonian boar hunt, which became known as the 'Dodwell Vase' and now resides in Munich.
Although Dodwell assembled a large collection of antiquities, including a head from the west pediment of the Parthenon, he is best known for his drawings and watercolours. Over 400 were produced by him and another 600 by the artist he employed, Simone Pomardi. Assisted by the use of a camera obsucra (a device that a number of locals regarded with deep suspicion, suspecting it to be a form of witchcraft) the drawings are famous for their accuracy, often preserving details now lost and represent an otherwise unrecoverable view of the landscape from a time before large-scale European visitation.