SUMMER is here and it’s time for the Wordsworth Trust to put on its biggest exhibition of the year.

The Grasmere-based arts organisation is pushing back the boundaries, hosting a ground-breaking show, combining traditional creativity with ultra modern methods of delivery.

Edward Lear the Landscape Artist: Tours of Ireland and the English Lakes, 1835 and 1836, runs until October 4.

The story behind the exhibition draws on previously unpublished letters from Lear to friends in the south of England, which describe in humourous detail, the Lake District trip he undertook in 1836 to draw landscapes after staying with his patron the Earl of Derby.

The letters, the numbered sequence of images and extensive research have enabled exhibition curator Charles Nugent to trace the long-distance route Lear took.

And, using top notch technology, a three-dimensional digital map of the path Lear took has been created, which will allow visitors to “fly” along the route he would have taken through the Lakes. The state-of-the-art footage stops at locations where he sketched, zooming in on the spot with an image of Lear’s finished picture popping up on a computer simulation of the landscape.

It is said that on a good day, the prolific young Lear would complete five or six sketches, sometimes with significant distances between the views, capturing both the form and atmosphere of the landscapes.

On foot and on horseback, his journey lasted from early August until the end of October 1836.

Although, best known for his nonsense poetry – check out ‘runcible spoon’ from the closing lines of The Owl and the Pussycat – cartoon-like illustrations and being credited with inventing the limerick, his main ambition was to be an artist.

The trust’s exhibition contains more than 100 drawings and watercolours, including all the known pictures resulting from Lear’s trip to Ireland in August 1835, plus the letters, lithographs and books.

Wordsworth Trust director Michael McGregor said the exhibition was relevant to 21st Century visitors to Wordsworth country in many ways and had such a great story behind it.

“This is an example of a show which marries art, adventure, technology and scholarship to produce something that will touch a wide range of people,” he said.