Elizabeth Eastlake

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Elizabeth Eastlake

Elizabeth Eastlake , b. Rigby , (born November 17, 1809 in Norwich , Norwich , † October 2, 1893 in London ) was an English art critic , writer and translator .

Life

Rigby was a daughter of doctor Dr. Edward Rigby and his second wife Anne Palgrave. Rigby's father was a student of the scientist Joseph Priestley and a student friend of the doctor Dr. Edward Jenner ; at home there was a liberal outlook and Rigby got to know the journalist Henry Reve ( The Times ), the writer Lucie Duff-Gordon , the polar explorer William Edward Parry , among others . A maternal aunt was married to the botanist Francis Palgrave.

Dr. Rigby promoted his children as early as he could and most of his friends supported him in this. When Rigby died in 1821, the family moved to their estate at Framingham Earl and Rigby was granted only one French governess.

At the age of 18 Rigby fell ill with typhus in 1827 and her stepmother sent her to Switzerland and later to Germany ( Heidelberg ) to recover . During this almost two-year stay at the spa, Rigby learned the German language. Started out of boredom, but soon with the ambition to become financially independent from her family as a translator. Her debut for this was a work by the art historian Johann David Passavant ("Essay on English art collections").

In July 1832 Rigby went to London to study literature and art for a year. In addition to the British Museum and the National Gallery , it was - according to his own statements - the painter Henry Sass who offered an "art class for women" in his private painting school (Sass's Academy "in Bloomsbury ).

In 1835 Rigby made another trip to Germany and on her return published an important essay on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in the journal Foreign Quarterly . At the beginning of October 1838 she embarked on a journey through the Russian Empire with a longer stay in Tallinn ( Estonia ), where one of her sisters was married. Her letters from these trips were later collected and published by the publisher John Murray .

The publisher of Quarterly Review , George Lockhart , became aware of Rigby and hired her as a journalist. With her article in March 1842 she became the first woman who could publish regularly in the QR .

In October 1842 her stepmother sold the family property at Framingham and settled in Edinburgh with her family . There Rigby, supported by the publishers Lockhart and Murray, soon got access to some salons; there she met Sir William Drysdale , literary critic Lord Francis Jeffrey , the philosopher John Wilson and H. O. Hill know. The latter photographed Rigby and so it is guaranteed that she was more than six feet tall.

In 1844 Rigby spent a few months in London, where he met the historian Thomas Carlyle , George Borrow , the writer Agnes Strickland and the painter William Turner . From London Rigby visited her sister in Estonia again and the return journey took her via Stockholm, where she stayed for a few weeks.

In 1845 she traveled to Germany for eight weeks and dealt extensively with Cologne Cathedral ; a noteworthy report on it appeared in the Quarterley Review in September 1846 .

When Rigby stayed in London in the spring of 1844 on the occasion of exhibitions by the painters William Etty , Charles Lock Eastlake the Elder , Edwin Landseer and William Turner, she was introduced to Eastlake (probably by Turner) and he took her out to dinner on May 19, 1846.

In 1848 Rigby was again in Germany for eight weeks, the majority of which in Frankfurt am Main . She visited Johann David Passavant, who wanted to get to know his translator. After her return in the fall of 1848, her most famous article appeared in the QR : a critical essay on the books Vanity Fair ( William Makepeace Thackeray ) and Jane Eyre ( Charlotte Brontë ) in December of that year.

On April 9, 1849, the couple married in Edinburgh and on May 1 of the same year they moved into their common apartment in London ( Fitzroy Square ). The marriage had a good star from the start; except for the drama of the stillbirth of their only child in June 1851.

Through the position of her husband ( accolade in 1850), Eastlake played an important role in London society from the start. Friends and acquaintances from this period include: Lady Marion Alford , the mathematician Charles Babbage , the philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts , Thomas Carlyle , the writer Charles Dickens , Lady Ada Lovelace (Lord George Gordon Byron's daughter), the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay , Caroline Norton, and many others.

When her husband was appointed director of the Royal Academy in 1851 , social obligations multiplied many times over. In addition to Edwin Landseer, Charles Landseer , Henry and William Challon , David Roberts , William Dyce , many others were regular guests. But Lady Eastlake was also a welcome guest on many important social occasions; including the opening of the Great Exhibition in 1851 or the funeral of Wellington in November 1852.

In 1854 Lady Eastlake got into a minor scandal when she became an accomplice and witness to Effie Ruskin in their efforts to have her marriage to John Ruskin annulled.

In the autumn of 1852 the Eastlake couple went on an extensive trip to Europe. Apart from 1853 and 1856, one such trip took place annually until the death of her husband in 1865. In addition to recreation, these also served as a passion for collecting and making purchases for the Royal Gallery. All of these trips always ended with a long stay in Italy.

When Anna Jameson , one of the earliest female art historians, died, Lady Eastlake was asked to finish her iconography of Jesus Christ . In 1864 she was able to publish the "History of our Lord" with great success.

She made the last trip together with her husband in August 1865. After only a short illness, Charles Eastlake died on December 24, 1865 in Pisa. According to her own statements, she coped with some of her grief work by writing. "Fellowship" was created in 1868 and, two years later, the first biography of her deceased husband. She also set a literary monument to the sculptor John Gibson with a biography. During these years she became friends with Harriet Grote , the wife of the ancient historian George Grote . In 1880 Lady Eastlake published a biography of her friend.

In 1871 she only traveled to Dresden for the Holbein exhibition and reported on it in the QR . Further shorter trips followed: Paris in spring 1872, Scotland in autumn 1873, Venice in spring 1877, St. Petersburg in 1878. Readers were also informed about this, as well as about important exhibitions in London, such as those by George Pinwell (1873) or Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1883).

From 1873 Lady Eastlake became ailing and from 1880 she became seriously ill with rheumatism . She became bedridden in August 1893 and died on October 2, 1893, at the age of nearly 84. She found her final resting place on October 6, 1893 in the cemetery of Kensal Green next to her husband.

Alongside Harriet Martineau and Frances Power Cobbe , Lady Eastlake is one of the first women journalists. As an art critic, she is often mentioned before Maria Calcott and Julia Cartwright . Lady Eastlake has been involved with art for over sixty years and she set things in motion with her articles.

Works (selection)

  • A Residence on the Shores of the Baltic, described in a Series of Letters in Two Volumes (unauthorized). Murray, London, 1841. Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 on Google Books .
    • Later edition in one volume (without indication of responsibility): Letters from the Shores of the Baltic . Murray, London, 1844. Digitized from Google Books .
    • Anonymous translation into German: (without stating the author): Baltic letters . Brockhaus, Leipzig 1846. (2 vol.). Volume 1 in the Internet Archive .
  • The Jewess: A Tale from the Shores of the Baltic: By the Author of "Letters from the Baltic". Murray, London, 1843. Digitized from Google Books .
  • Livonian Tales: The Dispatcher. The Wolves. The Jewess: By the Author of "Letters from the Baltic" . Murray, London 1846. Digitized in the Internet Archive .
  • Fellowship: Letters Addressed to My Sister Mourners . 1868. Digitized version of the extended new edition in the Internet Archive .
  • Life of John Gibson, RA: Sculptor: Edited by Lady Eastlake . Longmans, London 1870. Digitized in the Internet Archive .
  • Memoir of Sir Charles Lock Eastlake . In: Contributions to the Literature of the Fine Arts: By Sir Charles Lock Eastlake (pp. 1–192). Murray, London 1870. Digitized in the Internet Archive .
  • Harriet Grote: A Sketch: By Lady Eastlake . Murray, London 1880. Digitized in the Internet Archive .
  • Five great painters: Essays reprinted from the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews . Longmans, London 1883. (2 vol.). Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 at HathiTrust .

Translations

literature

  • Julie Sheldon (ed.): The Letters of Elizabeth Rigby, Lady Eastlake . Liverpool University Press 2009. ( PDF 7.9 MB in the OAPEN Library )
  • Joseph Garver: Lady Eastlake's 'livonian' fiction . In: Studia Neophilologica Vol. 51, 1979, Issue 1, p. 17-29 ( digitized 1st page at Taylor & Francis Online)
  • Marion Lochhead: Elizabeth Rigby, Lady Eastlake . Murray, London 1961.
  • Journals and Correspondence of Lady Eastlake: Edited by her Nephew Charles Eastlake Smith: With Facsimiles of Her Drawings and a Portrait: In Two Volumes . Murray, London 1895. ( Vol. 2 in the Internet Archive )
  • John Murray (Ed.): Letters of Lady Eastlake . Murray, London 1841.
  • David A. Robertson: Sir Charles Eastlake and the Victorian art world . University Press, Princeton, NJ: 1978, ISBN 0-691-03902-X .
  • Claire Sherman, Adele M. Holcomb (Eds.): Women as interpreters of visual arts. 1820-1979 . Greenwood Press, Westport, Con. 1981, ISBN 0-313-22056-5 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Eastlake, Elizabeth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rigby, Elizabeth (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English art critic and writer
DATE OF BIRTH November 17, 1809
PLACE OF BIRTH Norwich , Norfolk
DATE OF DEATH October 2, 1893
Place of death London