Art History Scholarship between the 1820s and 1870s: Contextualising the Eastlake Library at the National Gallery, London

Sir Charles Lock Eastlake (1793-1865), the first Director of the National Gallery in London, President of the Royal Academy and Secretary to the Fine Arts Commission, was a figure of crucial significance in the shaping of art historical understanding in Britain between the 1820s and 1860s. His library, consisting of approximately 2000 volumes, reflects his interests in these areas, especially in the fields of attribution, provenance research and the history of artistic techniques. This paper aims to contextualize the Eastlake library by comparing its contents to other art historical libraries from this period. Eastlake's library demonstrates his pragmatic and diligent approach to his work. The items in the Eastlake library are targeted towards specific areas of study, aligned to Eastlake’s interests and working roles, and echoes how Leopoldo Cicognara (1767-1834) constructed his collection according to his own scholarly interests. Eastlake’s library can be compared to other bibliographic vehicles of his contemporaries, earlier art history scholars and colleagues. For example; Johann David Passavant (1787-1861) and his contributions to the Library at the Städelinstitut, Leopoldo Cicognara, Luigi Lanzi (1732-1810), whose bibliography Storia pittorica della Italia (1822) is in the Eastlake library, and is referenced in a manuscript bibliography in the same collection, and Ralph Nicholson Wornum (1812-1877), Keeper of the National Gallery during Eastlake’s tenure as director. This comparative approach sheds light on how these collections intersected on a scholarly level, and underlines contextual points of divergence as scholars and institutions developed according to their own aims.