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Elizabeth Eastlake
Elizabeth, Lady Eastlake (17 November 1809 – 2 October 1893), born Elizabeth Rigby, was an English author, art critic and art historian who made regular contributions to the Quarterly Review. She is known for her writing and her significant role in the London art world.
Elizabeth Eastlake was born in Norwich into the large family of Edward and Anne Rigby. Her father, a physician and classical scholar, and her mother included her in their social life and conversations with prominent citizens and intellectuals.
From a young age, Eastlake was fond of drawing and continued studying art into her twenties, when she was taught to draw and etch by the artist Edward Daniell. She was privately educated and learned French and Italian, however after an illness in 1827 she convalesced in Germany and Switzerland. She stayed two years and started a lifetime of publication with a translation of Johann David Passavant's essay on English art. A second trip to Germany in 1835 led to an article on Goethe. After travelling to Russia and Estonia to visit a married sister, her published letters and her travel book A Residence on the Shores of the Baltic (1841) led to an invitation to write for the Quarterly Review by editor John Gibson Lockhart.
In 1842, her widowed mother Anne moved with her daughters to Edinburgh. There Eastlake's literary career brought entry to an intellectual social circle including prominent figures such as Lord Jeffrey, John Murray and David Octavius Hill. Robert Adamson, assisted by Hill, photographed her in a series of about 20 early calotypes.
Despite a diary entry in 1846 saying there were many "compensations" for unmarried women, three years later, at the age of 40, she married the artist, art historian and critic Sir Charles Lock Eastlake. He was the first Director of the National Gallery in London and in 1853 became the first president of the Photographic Society. She joined him in an active working and social life, entertaining artists such as Landseer and mixing with a wide range of well-known people, including Lord Macaulay, Anna Jameson and Ada Lovelace. Her habit of continental travel continued through the 1850s and 1860s as she and her husband toured several European countries in search of new acquisitions for the gallery.
Eastlake wrote extensively about art. Julie Sheldon in The Letters of Elizabeth Rigby, Lady Eastlake has compiled a full bibliography.
Some highlights are:
Reviews of Vanity Fair and Jane Eyre, in the Quarterly Review vol. 84, 1848 – notorious for her critical view of Jane Eyre. She disputed the morality of the novel, writing that ‘the popularity of Jane Eyre is a proof how deeply the love for illegitimate romance is implanted in our nature’ and summarising with ‘It is a very remarkable book: we have no remembrance of another combining such genuine power with such horrid taste’.
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Elizabeth Eastlake
Elizabeth, Lady Eastlake (17 November 1809 – 2 October 1893), born Elizabeth Rigby, was an English author, art critic and art historian who made regular contributions to the Quarterly Review. She is known for her writing and her significant role in the London art world.
Elizabeth Eastlake was born in Norwich into the large family of Edward and Anne Rigby. Her father, a physician and classical scholar, and her mother included her in their social life and conversations with prominent citizens and intellectuals.
From a young age, Eastlake was fond of drawing and continued studying art into her twenties, when she was taught to draw and etch by the artist Edward Daniell. She was privately educated and learned French and Italian, however after an illness in 1827 she convalesced in Germany and Switzerland. She stayed two years and started a lifetime of publication with a translation of Johann David Passavant's essay on English art. A second trip to Germany in 1835 led to an article on Goethe. After travelling to Russia and Estonia to visit a married sister, her published letters and her travel book A Residence on the Shores of the Baltic (1841) led to an invitation to write for the Quarterly Review by editor John Gibson Lockhart.
In 1842, her widowed mother Anne moved with her daughters to Edinburgh. There Eastlake's literary career brought entry to an intellectual social circle including prominent figures such as Lord Jeffrey, John Murray and David Octavius Hill. Robert Adamson, assisted by Hill, photographed her in a series of about 20 early calotypes.
Despite a diary entry in 1846 saying there were many "compensations" for unmarried women, three years later, at the age of 40, she married the artist, art historian and critic Sir Charles Lock Eastlake. He was the first Director of the National Gallery in London and in 1853 became the first president of the Photographic Society. She joined him in an active working and social life, entertaining artists such as Landseer and mixing with a wide range of well-known people, including Lord Macaulay, Anna Jameson and Ada Lovelace. Her habit of continental travel continued through the 1850s and 1860s as she and her husband toured several European countries in search of new acquisitions for the gallery.
Eastlake wrote extensively about art. Julie Sheldon in The Letters of Elizabeth Rigby, Lady Eastlake has compiled a full bibliography.
Some highlights are:
Reviews of Vanity Fair and Jane Eyre, in the Quarterly Review vol. 84, 1848 – notorious for her critical view of Jane Eyre. She disputed the morality of the novel, writing that ‘the popularity of Jane Eyre is a proof how deeply the love for illegitimate romance is implanted in our nature’ and summarising with ‘It is a very remarkable book: we have no remembrance of another combining such genuine power with such horrid taste’.
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