Description: British Artist Charles Lock Eastlake (1793-1865) penned and signed this brief letter as a reply to someone who seems to have requested a portrait. Eastlake asserts that “I have for some time declined painting portraits. The picture to which you allude was what is called a fancy-picture.”

 

Eastlake was a student of Benjamin Haydon at the Royal Academy in London, where he later exhibited and became a member. He traveled to Paris and Rome, where he painted fellow artists Sir Thomas Lawrence and J. M. W. Turner. Eastlake was also an art scholar, and translated Goethe’s Theory of Colours in 1840. His work as an art historian and his reputation as an artist led to his nomination to become secretary of the Fine Arts Commission in 1841. Eastlake also served as the second president of the Birmingham Society of Artists, President of the Royal Academy, the first President of the Photographic Society, and was the first Director of the National Gallery. He was also knighted in 1850.

 

Autograph letter signed written on two pages of a piece of paper that is folded to:4 ½” x 3 ½”. Item #A00991.

 

Condition: Fold lines, mounting remnants on blank verso, otherwise in very good condition with a clear, neat signature.