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until his death. Enjoying the full support of both Prince
Albert and Parliament, Eastlake greatly expanded the
collection of the National Gallery.
Eastlake’s knowledge of and interest in photogra-
phy was at least partly due to his association with the
writer and critic Elizabeth Rigby whom he may have
met as early as 1843. Rigby was at that time living in
Edinburgh where she had both written about and posed
for David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson. As an art
critic, Rigby wrote glowingly of a series of Eastlake’s
portraits, referring to him in her journal of 2 March
1844 as “the Raphael of England.” Their professional
relationship, as advocates of German art historicism in
Britain, evolved into a romance and on 9 April 1849, the
middle-aged couple was married at St. John’s Church
in Edinburgh.
From their position as what Steegman calls a “com-
posite personality”1 atop the mid-Victorian art world,
the Eastlakes’ support of photography lent considerable
prestige to the new medium. The fi rst manifestation
of this may have come through Sir Charles’ (he was
knighted in 1850) position as a member of the Board
of Governors of the Great Exhibition of 1851. The
Board sanctioned the most ambitious retrospective of
photography in the medium’s 12 year history, while the
Great Exhibition as a whole recognized photography as
both an industrial process and a tool for recording of
the event itself.
Eastlake’s involvement with photography continued
in the following year as part of the effort to encourage
William Henry Fox Talbot to relinquish his patents on
the calotype process. Talbot had agreed to the request
on the condition that he would be offi cially asked to do
so by major fi gures in the British artistic community.
Together with Lord Rosse, President of the Royal So-
ciety of Arts, Eastlake signed the formal request. Talbot
responded with a letter allowing free use of the process
by all but professional portrait photographers (both
documents then being published in the London Times
on 13 August 1852). This agreement failed to satisfy
the professional photographers, who continued to press
Talbot for unconditional release of his patents. It is H.J.P.
Arnold’s contention that the impasse became an impetus
for Roger Fenton’s organization of the Photographic So-
ciety of London while Gail Buckland asserts that it was
Talbot’s refusal to relinquish his patents that delayed the
Society’s formation. In either case, the effort to placate
Talbot by offering him the Presidency of the new society
was met with Talbot’s refusal. At its fi rst meeting on
20 January, 1853, it was instead Sir Charles Eastlake
who agreed to become the Society’s fi rst President. As
Elizabeth would write in her anonymously published
1857 Quarterly Review article, “Photography,” her
husband was selected by the members “in order to givethe newly instituted body the support and recognition
which art was supposed to owe it.”
Eastlake served two consecutive terms as President
of the Photographic Society of London (1853–1855).
Although Fenton, as the Society’s Honorary Secretary,
was responsible for most of its organizational activities,
there is little doubt that the Society benefi ted directly
from Eastlake’s long association with the Royal family.
In May 1853, both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert
became members and then on 2 June 1853, during the
Society’s fi fth meeting, a letter from Buckingham Palace
announced the bestowal of Royal Patronage upon it.
Eastlake was among those who escorted Victoria and
Albert through the Society’s fi rst exhibition in January,
1854 at the Suffolk Street Gallery of the Society of
British Artists. As the Royal family’s artistic advisor,
Eastlake may also be credited with establishing their
use of photography as a tool in art historical studies. In
1853, Prince Albert commissioned a systematic photo-
graphic record of the Royal family’s Raphael drawings,
a work later published as “The Raphael Collection at
Windsor Castle.”
Eastlake’s contributions to photography between
his departure from the presidency of the Photographic
Society and his death in Pisa on 24 December 1865
are more nebulous. Although he and Elizabeth were in
close agreement on artistic issues, there is no evidence
of his collaboration in her seminal 1857 essay. Perhaps
his greatest contribution in those years as before was
to lend the considerable weight of the offi cial Victorian
art world to at least a consideration of the medium’s
legitimacy.
Renate Wickens-FeldmanBiography
Sir Charles Lock Eastlake was born on 17 November
1793 in Plymouth, England. From 1816–1830, he
pursued a career as painter and art historian in France,
Greece and Italy. Upon his return to England, Eastlake
was appointed to a series of offi cial positions culminat-
ing in President of the Royal Academy (1850) and Direc-
tor of the National Gallery (1855). Eastlake’s interest in
photography was encouraged through his association,
from the mid-1840s, with the critic Elizabeth Rigby,
whom he married in 1849. In 1852, Eastlake helped
mediate the agreement by which William Henry Fox
Talbot placed his patents in the public domain for all pur-
poses other than portraiture. The following year, he was
appointed President of the newly formed Photographic
Society of London, a position he retained until 1855.
Eastlake’s long collaboration with Victoria and Albert
was likely responsible for the Society’s gaining royal
patronage. He died in Pisa on 24 December 1865.EASTLAKE, SIR CHARLES LOCK
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