Anna Jameson Lecture 2024

The fourth annual Anna Jameson Lecture spotlighted the part played by Lady Elizabeth Eastlake (1809–1893) in the history of the National Gallery. For many years she has been relegated to a footnote in art and literary criticism by her redoubtable views on arts and letters; and obscured by her marriage to Sir Charles Eastlake, the first Director of the National Gallery. However, in her day her fame was such that when her husband received his doctorate at Oxford in 1853, the University’s Public Orator described Eastlake as a man fortunate in his most famous spouse, ‘who is herself as distinguished in letters as he is in art’. In this lecture Professor Sheldon (Liverpool John Moores University) examined Lady Eastlake’s amateur art practice and her professional career as a translator, critic and essayist, to demonstrate the ways in which her interests crystallised at the National Gallery. An inveterate letter writer, Lady Eastlake has left a rich legacy of correspondence which Professor Sheldon drew upon to illuminate the part she played in the Gallery’s history. Indeed, far from seeing the letters as a means of animating or corroborating her husband’s tenure, Professor Sheldon showed how this ‘woman of letters’ was an active agent in the promotion and protection of the Gallery’s mission.

The lecture was held on the evening of Wednesday 26 June 2024 at the Society of Antiquaries, London, as well as online. 

Download the lecture PDF

Julie Sheldon, 'A Woman of Letters: Lady Eastlake's Legacy at the National Gallery', No. 4, 26 June 2024 (PDF, 4.02MB)

The Anna Jameson Lecture series is generously supported by the Diane Apostolos-Cappadona Trust.