This May, the National Gallery in London will begin a year of celebrations to mark their bicentenary. As they celebrate their past and look forward to the future, we thought we’d take a look at a few connections from the RSA Collection.
In April 1824, the British Government spent £57,000 on the purchase of 38 paintings collected by banker John Julius Angerstein. These works would form the foundation of a National Gallery. And on 10 May, the doors of Angerstein’s former home, 100 Pall Mall, were opened to the public.
1838, the Collection had been greatly enhanced by subsequent acquisitions and moved to its present location in Trafalgar Square. At first the Collection was under the care of a Keeper and a Board of Trustees, and it was not until 1855 that the first Director was appointed - Sir Charles Lock Eastlake (1793-1865). A distinguished art historian and amateur artist, Eastlake had previously served as the Gallery’s second Keeper, and was the first President of the Photographic Society in 1853.
Sir Charles Lock Eastlake married Elizabeth Rigby in 1849. Rigby had lived in Edinburgh in the 1840s, during which time she became acquainted with Robert Adamson and David Octavius Hill RSA. Rigby was a frequent sitter to Hill and Adamson, appearing in at least 20 of their calotypes.
Amongst Robert Adamson and David Octavius Hill RSA’s other sitters was Hill’s lifelong friend Thomas Duncan RSA. Lady Eastlake praised Duncan’s final ‘Self-Portrait’, which was a highlight of our Annual Exhibition in 1845. Just three days after recording her delight at seeing the portrait on show, Lady Eastlake visited Duncan, and recorded in her Journal; ‘Duncan nearly blind, no longer like the man who sat to that splendid picture, or the artist who painted it.’ The painting was purchased by fifty fellow artists, and presented by them to the RSA Collection. The painting was amongst those works transferred by the RSA to the National Gallery of Scotland in 1910.
Thomas Duncan, Self Portrait (1844). Oil on canvas. Image: National Galleries of Scotland.
Our links with the National Gallery in London extend further, and in 1858 Sir Charles Eastlake was elected as an Honorary Member of the Royal Scottish Academy. Since then, a further two of the National Gallery’s thirteen directors to date have been elected as Honorary Members: Kenneth Clark, Lord Clark of Saltwood (8th Director 1934-45), and Robert Neil MacGregor (12th Director 1987-2002) in 1995.
We congratulate the National Gallery on its bicentenary, and wish it a joyous and successful year of celebration!
About the author
Robin Rodger
Robin H. Rodger graduated as O. E. Saunders Prizeman in Art History from the University of St Andrews in 1983, before taking his Diploma in Art Gallery and Museum Studies at the University of Manchester in 1984. The next 26 years were spent at Perth Museum and Art Gallery, and since 2013 he has been Documentation Officer with the Royal Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture. A keen researcher, he has lectured and published widely on Perthshire artists and Perth silver, and is currently engaged in research projects relating to aspects of print and printmaking in Scotland.
