1. Elizabeth, Lady Eastlake, born Elizabeth Rigby, was an English author, art critic and art historian who made regular contributions to the Quarterly Review.
15 Facts About Elizabeth Eastlake
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Elizabeth Eastlake is known for her writing and her significant role in the London art world.
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Elizabeth Eastlake was born in Norwich into the large family of Edward and Anne Rigby.
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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.
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Elizabeth Eastlake was privately educated and learned French and Italian, however after an illness in 1827 she convalesced in Germany and Switzerland.
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Elizabeth Eastlake stayed two years and started a lifetime of publication with a translation of Johann David Passavant's essay on English art.
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Elizabeth Eastlake was the first Director of the National Gallery in London and in 1853 became the first president of the Photographic Society.
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Elizabeth Eastlake 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.
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Elizabeth Eastlake 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 rejected his "fundamental false principle" that "the language of painting is invaluable as the vehicle of thought, but by itself nothing".
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Elizabeth Eastlake sometimes collaborated with her husband Charles Eastlake, and she wrote a memoir of him after his death in 1865.
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In 1895 her nephew Charles Elizabeth Eastlake Smith edited her Letters and Correspondence.
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Mitchell considers Elizabeth Eastlake to have been a scholarly and perceptive critic, and Marion Lochhead regards Elizabeth Eastlake as a 'pioneer of feminine journalism'.
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Elizabeth Eastlake is considered to be one of the most important women19th century art historians along with Anna Jameson and Emilia Dilke.
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Elizabeth Eastlake is portrayed by Emma Thompson in the film Effie Gray.