Charles Lock Eastlake the Elder

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Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, pencil drawing by John Partridge , 1825, 24.1 × 18.4 cm, National Portrait Gallery

Sir Charles Lock Eastlake PRA (born November 17, 1793 in Plymouth , † December 24, 1865 in Pisa ) was an English painter and art scholar and first director of the National Gallery .

Napoleon Bonaparte on Board the 'Bellerophon' in Plymouth Sound , oil on canvas, 1815, National Maritime Museum

Life

Eastlake attended Charterhouse School , one of England's seven famous private schools. He then turned to art and was trained by Benjamin Robert Haydon . He studied at the Royal Academy of Arts ( London ) under Henry Fuseli and was able to make his debut in an exhibition there. The art collector and patron Jeremiah Harman (1763–1844) became aware of him and made it possible for him to study for a longer period in Paris in 1815 , where he studied the masterpieces there in the Louvre . However, the political events soon brought Eastlake back to London. He achieved his first major success with the painting Napoleon on Board the Bellerophon in Plymouth Sound (1815, now in the National Maritime Museum , London).

Eastlake was in Rome for the first time in 1816 and in 1818 he took a trip to Greece with William Brockedon (1787-1854) and Charles Barry . At the end of 1818 Eastlake was back in Rome. One of his most important works of that time was his "Byron Picture". On February 10, 1830 he was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts , of which he was president from 1850 to 1865.

He lived in Rome for 12 years and led the British artist colony after traveling to the continent was possible again. Her main focus was on ancient architecture and Eastlake created many sketches there, which he later used as the basis for his genre pieces and landscape paintings . During this time Eastlake was still based on the style of Titian . His friends called him "Carlo the Salamander" because he spent so much time outdoors.

Christ Blessing Little Children , oil on canvas, 1839, 79 × 103.2 cm, Manchester Art Gallery

In 1830 he returned to London via Vienna . Following the example of the Munich fresco painting, he began decorating the newly built English parliament houses in 1841. His pictures express artistic sense, study and delicacy, but little creative power; the most praiseworthy thing about them is the beauty of the coloring and the care of the technique. In New York in 1845 he was elected Honorary NA of the National Academy of Design .

In 1849 he married the writer Elizabeth Rigby in London . The following year Eastlake was appointed to succeed Martin Shee (1769-1850) as President of the Royal Academy of Arts . As such, he was promoted to Knight Bachelor on November 13, 1850 by Queen Victoria . In 1853 he became the first president of the Royal Photographic Society . In 1855 he was appointed the first official director of the National Gallery in London. Due to these more administrative and representative tasks, hardly any noteworthy pictures were created from this time on.

Instead he began to write. In addition to his main work Materials for a history of oilpainting , he also translated Goethe's theory of colors . Together with his personal assistant, the art historian Nicholas Ralph Wornum (1812–1877), Eastlake created a catalog, an academic inventory of all the holdings entrusted to him.

With a generous budget, Eastlake was able to travel through Europe for several months each year and buy paintings. On his last tour, he died just five weeks after his 72nd birthday in Pisa on December 23, 1865. At the request of the Royal Academy, he should be honored with a grave of honor in St Paul's Cathedral . His widow was able to get her way through and so he quietly found his final resting place in the Kensal Green cemetery .

The sculptor John Gibson created a bust of Eastlake that can still be seen today in the National Portrait Gallery in London, and John Prescott Knight (1803-1881) created a portrait of Eastlake, which was later made by George Thomas Doo (1800-1886) in Copper engraved was widely used.

Works

Books
  • Digitized by Charles Lock Eastlake in the Internet Archive
  • Materials for a history of oil painting . Murray, London 1847/1869 (2 vol.)
  • Contributions to the literature of the fine arts . Murray, London 1848 (2 vol.)
  • 1840 Translation of Goethe's Theory of Colors - " Theory of Colors "
  • 1851 Translation by Franz Kugler: History of the Italian School of Painting
  • 1855 Translation by Franz Kugler: Handbook of Painting
photos

Many of his oil paintings have been reproduced through copperplate engravings and found wide distribution.

  • 1815 Napoleon at the gangway of the Bellerophon
  • 1827 The Spartian Isadas at the Siege of Thebes
  • 1828 Pilgrims in sight of Rome
  • 1830 Byron's dream
  • 1839 Christ blessing little children
  • 1834 Escape of Francesco di Carrara
  • 1841 Christ Lamenting over Jerusalem
  • 1843 Hagar and Ishamael
  • 1845 Comus
  • 1849 Helena
  • 1851 Ippolita Torelli
  • 1853 Violante
  • 1855 Beatrice

literature

Web links

Commons : Charles Lock Eastlake  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Royal Academy of Arts: Database Entry - Charles Lock Eastlake , accessed May 22, 2013.
  2. ↑ nationalacademy.org: Past Academicians "E" / Eastlake, Sir Charles Lock Honorary 1845 ( Memento of the original from August 14, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on June 20, 2015)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nationalacademy.org
  3. ^ William Arthur Shaw: The Knights of England. Volume 2, Sherratt and Hughes, London 1906, p. 348.
  4. ^ Sir Charles Eastlake 1853-1855 First President of the Photographic Society
  5. ^ First director of the National Gallery from 1855 until his death in 1865
personal data
SURNAME Eastlake, Charles Lock the Elder
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Eastlake, Charles Lock
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English painter and art scholar. First director of the National Gallery. President of the Royal Academy of Arts
DATE OF BIRTH November 17, 1793
PLACE OF BIRTH Plymouth
DATE OF DEATH December 24, 1865
Place of death Pisa