Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, 1793–1865, British, active in Italy (1816–30), The Erechtheum, Athens, with Figures in the Foreground, 1821
- Title:
- The Erechtheum, Athens, with Figures in the Foreground
- Date:
- 1821
- Materials & Techniques:
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions:
- 26 3/8 x 35 1/4 inches (67 x 89.5 cm)
- Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:
Signed and dated in brown paint, lower right: "CLE | R [?] 1821"
- Credit Line:
- Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
- Copyright Status:
- Public Domain
- Accession Number:
- B1976.7.26
- Classification:
- Paintings
- Collection:
- Paintings and Sculpture
- Link to Frame:
- B1976.7.26FR
- Subject Terms:
- architectural subject | architecture | caryatids | columns | costume | figures | Greek | Ionic | landscape | leisure | men | pipe | ruins | sculpture | temple | turban
- Associated Places:
- Athens | Erechtheum | Greater Athens | Greece
- Access:
- Not on view
- Link:
- https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:265
- Export:
- XML
- IIIF Manifest:
- JSON
Charles Eastlake spent the years 1816 to 1830 living in Rome and touring the Mediterranean, all the while sending paintings back to London for exhibition. This view on the Acropolis was painted in Rome, several years after Eastlake’s Greek tour in 1818. Greece was then controlled by the Ottoman Empire, and travel to the region was unusual at this date. Eastlake’s memoirs capture the highly charged political situation in the region as the Greeks’ chafed under Ottoman domination and worked for independence. His traveling companions proceeded to Constantinople while Eastlake remained “the only Englishman in Athens” and filled his sketchbook with drawings of the principal sites, including the Erechtheum represented here, which was built in the fifth century BCE under the leadership of Pericles and dedicated to the legendary Athenian King Erichthonius. The painting was commissioned by Frederick North, the fifth Earl of Guilford and a devotee of Greece and its culture. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016
Edward Lear and the Art of Travel (Yale Center for British Art, 2000-09-20 - 2001-01-14) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]
Noble Simplicity and Silent Greatness - Neoclassical Art from 1700 - 1900 (Yale University Art Gallery, 1991-04-26 - 1991-09-29) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]
Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 90-91, N590.2 A83 (YCBA) [YCBA]
Scott Wilcox, Edward Lear and the art of travel, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2000, pp. 152-3, no. 170, NJ18 L455 W55 2000 (YCBA) [YCBA]
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