Charles Lock Eastlake was born in Plymouth, Devon on 17 November 1793. He was the youngest of four sons. His father, George Eastlake was Solicitor to the Admiralty and Judge-Advocate of the Admiralty Court. His mother was Mary Pierce. Charles was educated at Plympton Grammar School (like Joshua Reynolds before him) and briefly, at Charterhouse, Surrey. He set his heart on becoming a painter and in 1809 became the first pupil of Benjamin Robert Haydon and a student at the Royal Academy Schools under Henry Fuseli. After the disastrous Battle of Leipzig, the mutiny of his marshals and the taking of Paris by the Allies, the Emperor Napoleon was sent into exile on the island of Elba under the terms of the Treaty of Fontainebleau in April 1814. With the coming of peace to a war-weary Europe, Eastlake was commissioned to travel to Paris to copy some of the paintings ‘collected’ by the Emperor in the Louvre (then known as the Musée Napoléon). On 26 February 1815, Napoleon escaped from exile and landed at Frejus in southern France, determined to overthrow the restored Bourbon dynasty, thus embarking on a journey that would end on the battlefield of Waterloo on 18 June. Eastlake’s first exhibited work, a large Christ restoring life to the Daughter of Jairus was shown at the British Institution in 1815. On returning to his home town later that year, Eastlake learned that Napoleon was held captive aboard Captain Maitland’s ship the BELLEROPHON, before being sent into exile on the God-forsaken island of St Helena in the South Atlantic. Like many others, Eastlake hired a boat to take him out to the ship in Plymouth Harbour and sketched the emperor. He then produced his Napoleon on Board the Bellerophon in Plymouth Sound (1815; National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; above). The depiction of the ex-emperor won Eastlake a degree of celebrity and a considerable sum of money from its public exhibition. It would be the only portrait of Napoleon painted from life by a British artist. The picture is striking in its innovative composition, hard, glossy paint, colour and lighting. In 1816 Eastlake travelled to Rome, where he painted members of the English quality touring Italy, including his fellow artists Sir Thomas Lawrence and J M W Turner. He also travelled to Naples and Athens. In 1817 Eastlake went out to Italy; in 1819 to Greece; in 1820 back to Italy, where he remained altogether 14 years, chiefly in Rome and in Ferrara. In Rome, he met the German Nazarenes and became familiar with the writings of German art historians, particularly von Rumohr, who was breaking new ground in his study of early Italian art. Eastlake was one of the most earnest of the younger artists who adopted neo-classicism in the 1820s. He painted subjects from classical history, and in Rome produced a number of landscape compositions depicting ancient ruins. Some of these continue the tradition of Thomas Jones’s immediate open-air studies. Others incorporate crumbling classical buildings in formal designs dominated by architectural geometry. Despite being based predominantly in Europe, Eastlake regularly sent works back to London for exhibition. In 1827 he was elected ARA. Three years later, he returned to England permanently, continuing to paint historic and biblical paintings set in Mediterranean landscapes and was elected RA. Other notable works he produced were: Hagar and Ishmael; A Peasant Woman bitten by a Serpent; The Saviour blessing Little Children and The Sisters. As an art scholar, Eastlake translated Goethe’s Zur Farbenlehre (Theory of Colours, 1810) and the Handbuch der Geschichte der Malerei (Handbook of the History of Painting) by Franz Kugler. Schopenhauer would write of Eastlake’s translation of Goethe’s work: ‘Eastlake, the painter and gallery inspector, furnished his countrymen, in 1840, with such an excellent translation of Goethe’s theory of colour that it is a perfect reproduction of the original and reads more easily; in fact, it is understood more easily than the original.’ Eastlake’s publications and his growing reputation as an artist led to his nomination in 1841 to become Secretary of the Fine Arts Commission, the body in charge of government art patronage. Eastlake refused many public appointments, but acceded to Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel’s personal request for him to act as Secretary to the Fine Arts Commission for decorating Pugin and Barry’s new Houses of Parliament at Westminster and retained the post until that body was dissolved in 1862. In the period 1842-44 he was the Librarian of the RA. Having already advised the National Gallery in London on acquisitions, he was appointed the gallery’s first Keeper in 1843. During his directorship, he purchased for the gallery 155 pictures, mostly of the Italian schools. He resigned the post in 1847, after an almighty artistic rumpus over a painting erroneously ascribed to Hans Holbein the Younger. He then resumed his writing and painting. His Christ Lamenting over Jerusalem (1846) may be found in the collection of the Tate. The picture was inspired by lines from the New Testament, including verses 37 and 38 from St Matthew’s Gospel, in which Christ foretells the destruction of Jerusalem: ‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.’ Eastlake incorporated into the picture a number of symbols which directly alluded to Christ’s prophecy. For example, the axe in the tree foreshadows Jerusalem’s fall, while the shepherd carrying a sheep symbolises Christ as the good shepherd. In 1849 Eastlake married Elizabeth Rigby (1809-93). She was an art historian and translator of German art histories. They thus established a formidable art history writing partnership. Eastlake was elected President of the Royal Academy and knighted in 1850. He was appointed first President of the Photographic Society in 1853 and in 1855, first Director of the National Gallery. Eastlake set out with the express purpose of acquiring pictures on the Continent, especially in northern Italy, which was then under Austrian rule. Working with Otto Mündler (1811-70), a Bavarian expert who was employed as the gallery’s travelling agent, he acquired 59 pictures in Italy between 1855 and 1857, including works by Mantegna, Perugino, Romanino and Veronese. In Florence, he purchased a substantial group of paintings from the Lombardi-Baldi Collection; among these were early works selected with a view to forming a historically representative collection. His additions to the National Collection included Botticelli’s Adoration of the Kings (c. 1470) and Uccello’s The Battle of San Romano (c. 1438-40). His directorship was marred by the signal failure of the new body to fulfil the terms of the Turner Bequest (and it remains unfulfilled to this day). As an important pillar of the art establishment, Eastlake was in direct opposition to the critic John Ruskin, advocate of both Turner’s later experimental art and the young anti-establishment Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. In addition to their opposing views on many areas of the arts, the Eastlakes, particularly Lady Eastlake, led the campaign against Ruskin, after his wife Effie left him for Millais. Somewhat ironically, Eastlake was a personal friend of Turner and the careful attention to detail, historical accuracy and high finish of his work has led art historians to designate him a forerunner of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Cambridge University awarded him an honorary degree in 1864. Eastlake died at Pisa, Italy on Christmas Eve 1865. He was originally buried at Florence, but was his coffin was exhumed and re-interred at Kensal Green on 18 January 1866 by desire of the Royal Academy. Sir Charles’s will provided for the National Gallery to purchase his own collection of paintings. Lady Eastlake also sold her husband’s art history book collection to the gallery’s library for £2,100. The Tate has seven works by Eastlake in its collection and they form a good, representative selection of both his themes and range. They are: The Colosseum from the Esquiline (1822); The Colosseum from the Campo Vaccino (1822); Haidée, a Greek Girl (1827; considered by the Duke of Wellington to be the best painting in the RA exhibition in 1831); Lord Byron’s ‘Dream’ (1827: exhibited 1829); Mrs Charles H Bellenden Ker (1835); Christ Lamenting over Jerusalem (1846) and The Escape of Francesco Novello di Carrara, with his Wife, from the Duke of Milan (exhibited 1850).