Lear and Hunt spent part of the summer and autumn of 1852 together at Fairlight on the coast near Hastings. During this time Hunt was painting his two landscape masterpieces: Our English Coasts ('Strayed Sheep'), 1852 and Fairlight Downs -- Sunlight on the Sea. Lear's subsequent oil paintings, in their treatment of clear sunlight and use of prismatic color, demonstrate the importance of this experience. In the autumn of 1852 Lear wrote to Hunt: "I really cannot help again expressing my thanks to you for the progress I have made this autumn . . . I am now beginning to have a perfect faith in the means employed, and if the Thermopylae' turn out right I am a P.R.B. forever." Lear lived for periods of time in Rome, Corfu, and finally at San Remo on the Italian Riviera to which place he moved during the winter of 1870-71. [http://hoocher.com/William_Holman_Hunt/William_Holman_Hunt.htm]