The Temple of Vesta at Tivoli by Sir Charles Lock Eastlake PRA, 1793-1865

The Temple of Vesta at Tivoli

Sir Charles Lock Eastlake PRA, 1793-1865

c. 1815-17

Oil on board

13x 9 inches

[See commentary below]

The Maas Gallery, London has most generously given its permission to use in the Victorian Web information, images, and text from its catalogues. The copyright on text and images from their catalogues remains, of course, with the Maas Gallery. Readers should consult the gallery website to obtain information about recent exhibitions and to order their catalogues. [GPL]

Commentary by Rupert Maas

In the autumn of 1917 Eastlake weni to Tivoli and stayed for six weeks close to the Temple of Vesta, from where he wrote to his mother: "Here one loiters about in the evening, and hence you look down an unfathomable gulf into; which two cascades tumble". He felt inspired there, as many others were: "How rich in associations is Tivoli", wrote Samuel Rogers in his journal (1815), "Horace and Catullus, Claude and Poussin have given it a lustre not its own, and yet it is a gem of the first order". Eastlake painted thirty oil studies whilst at Tivoli, and went back to Rome persuaded that he had learned "a little more landscape".

References

The Maas Gallery. Exhibition catalogue. London, 2007. Catalogue no. 76.

Robertson, David. Sir Charles Eastlake and The Victorian Art World. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1978.

Last modified 30 June 2007