Anne Rigby (née Palgrave); Elizabeth, Lady Eastlake (née Rigby)

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Anne Rigby (née Palgrave); Elizabeth, Lady Eastlake (née Rigby)

by David Octavius Hill, and Robert Adamson
calotype, 1843-1848
8 in. x 5 7/8 in. (201 mm x 148 mm)
Given by an anonymous donor, 1973
Primary Collection
NPG P6(134)

Sittersback to top

Artistsback to top

  • Robert Adamson (1821-1848), Pioneer photographer. Artist or producer associated with 382 portraits, Sitter in 3 portraits.
  • David Octavius Hill (1802-1870), Landscape and portrait painter; pioneer photographer. Artist or producer associated with 382 portraits, Sitter associated with 22 portraits.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Piper, David, The English Face, 1992, p. 202
  • Rogers, Malcolm, Camera Portraits, 1989 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 20 October 1989 - 21 January 1990), p. 23 Read entry

    Mrs Rigby was the widow of the physician Edward Rigby of Norwich, by whom she had twelve children (including quadruplets). In October 1842 she moved with two daughters, Elizabeth and Matilda, to Edinburgh. There Elizabeth, who had already travelled in Germany and Russia and published A Residence on the Shores of the Baltic, worked for the publisher, John Murray, at whose house she met Hill. She, her mother and sister often visited Hill and Adamson's studio at Rock House on Calton Hill, and were photographed there on several occasions. This double portrait of mother and daughter, which has the atmosphere of a genre study, is one of the photographers' most poetic treatments of the fall of light on fine fabrics.

    In 1849 Elizabeth married Charles (later Sir Charles) Eastlake, future President of the Royal Academy, Director of the National Gallery and first President of the Royal Photographic Society. In London this statuesque bluestocking (she was almost six feet tall) moved in the highest intellectual, literary and political circles, and pursued a long career as critic, art historian and biographer (among her subjects was the sculptor John Gibson).

Events of 1843back to top

Current affairs

Sir Henry Cole commissions 1,000 copies of the first Christmas card, designed by John Callcott Horsley. Cole would later be instrumental in staging the Great Exhibition, and in developing science and art education in Britain.
Nelson's statue, by E.H. Bailey, is placed on top of its column in Trafalgar Square.

Art and science

The Theatre Regulations Act is passed, abolishing the privileged position of the 'major' theatres which held letters patent from the crown, allowing all theatres to perform 'legitimate' theatre.
First volume of Ruskin's Modern Painters published, praising Turner and demanding that artists should demonstrate 'truth to nature' in their work. Ruskin is a great inspiration to the Pre-Raphaelites.

International

The first experimental telegraph wire is constructed between Baltimore and Washington, using Morse code to send a message. The code, in which pulses of current deflect an electromagnet, moving a marker and producing written codes on a strip of paper, had been invented by Samuel Morse in 1838. The line officially opens in 1844.

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