Calotype portraits of Elizabeth Rigby by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson

Abstract

Elizabeth Rigby, Lady Eastlake, is described in the Dictionary of National Biography as a ‘typical English “grande dame”, serene and easy in manner, intellectual and courageous, impervious to bores, highly esteemed, and looked up to in the best society in London’¹. Wife of Sir Charles Eastlake, artist, connoisseur, and Director of the National Gallery in London, she is remembered by posterity primarily as her husband's companion and confidante. Elizabeth's own accomplishments were considerable, however, and she had established a reputation as a formidable blue-stocking before she married Eastlake at the age of 39.