The National Gallery is world-famous for its collection of western European art, but when
we wander round the galleries, do we stop to consider why the pictures we see were acquired;
how they got to Trafalgar Square; why they are displayed in the way they are; or how
they came to receive their attributions to particular artists?
Such questions are certainly worth a moment’s thought for their answers open up central
aspects of the life and function of the National Gallery, and reveal just how much we owe to
one individual, who transformed the fortunes of this institution.
The person in question is Sir Charles Eastlake, who was the National Gallery’s first Director
for a decade from 1855.
Born in 1793 in Plymouth, he had ambitions to become a great painter. Having trained
in London at the Royal Academy Schools, at that time in the wing adjacent to the National
Gallery, he went to Rome in 1816 where he ended up staying for the next 14 years. Eastlake
travelled widely in Europe, especially in Italy, acquiring a detailed knowledge of western
European art and mixing with some of the leading European painters and thinkers about art.
He also began to acquire a reputation as a significant painter. His early bandit scenes
helped to make his name, while his later religious works were esteemed at the end of his career.
But Eastlake’s art could not compare, for instance, with the work of his friends the
portrait painter Sir Thomas Lawrence and the landscape artist Turner. Ultimately, Eastlake’s
reputation as a painter, though good, was never stellar.
Scholarly and meticulous, with a good organisational sense, Eastlake, on his return to London in
1830, soon came to the notice of those interested in promoting the arts in the public sphere,
including the politician Sir Robert Peel and also Prince Albert. Consequently, in 1841
Eastlake became Secretary of the Fine Arts Commission, with responsibility for finding
artists to paint murals to decorate the new Houses of Parliament.
With his reputation ever rising, Eastlake was appointed President of the Royal Academy
in 1850 and five years later, in 1855, he became the National Gallery’s first Director,
at which point he abandoned his career as a painter. At the National Gallery, Eastlake
concentrated his efforts on filling the gaps in the collection, because he wished to see
it become fully representative of the story of western European art.
Initially he focused his efforts on acquiring early Italian pictures. To this end, and with
an annual picture-purchasing grant of £10,000, he spent each summer abroad.
He often travelled with his feisty wife, the writer and art-critic, Lady Elizabeth, his
manservant Nicholas Tucker, and the Gallery’s Travelling Agent, Otto Mundler. His journeys
involved much discomfort: after all damp, flea-ridden beds, unpalatable food, and long,
jolting carriage journeys were par for the course in the mid-19th century.
Eastlake kept a series of Travel Notebooks in which he recorded the places visited and
the pictures seen. He constantly put his mind to matters of authentication, using novel
methods of research into artists’ techniques to assist him. His negotiations involved him
in persuading hesitant owners or wily dealers to part with pictures at reasonable prices.
The record speaks for itself: in a single decade Eastlake acquired over 150 pictures
for the nation.
Once the pictures had reached London, Eastlake ensured they were well displayed. Bearing
in mind new trends in European museums, he no longer showed the pictures as they had
been at the National Gallery’s first home, 100 Pall Mall, in random order, densely arranged,
and without any information.
Instead, from 1856 for the very first time, core information was supplied via an early
form of labelling, and detailed, scholarly catalogues were also published. To allow individual
schools of art to be enjoyed on their own merits, Eastlake started to hang pictures
by their country of origin and in chronological order, and he thought too about how pictures
should be framed and lit and against what colour background they should be displayed.
Perhaps surprisingly, this slight, frail and grave man was the formative influence in the
creation of the modern National Gallery. Yet as a painter, scholar, and ultimately connoisseur,
Eastlake’s many-sidedness contributed to the greatness of his achievement. His legacy
is most visible in the pictures on display, but his thinking about art and how it should
be displayed should not be forgotten for it foreshadowed in important ways the work the
Gallery undertakes today to care for and promote interest in its pictures.