
Not on display
- Artist
- Sir Charles Lock Eastlake 1793–1865
- Medium
- Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions
- Support: 527 × 648 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Presented by the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1964
- Reference
- T00665
Display caption
Eastlake was one of the most earnest of the younger artists who adopted neo-classicism in the 1820s. He painted subjects from classical history, and in Rome produced a number of landscape compositions depicting ancient ruins. Some of these continue the tradition of Thomas Jones's immediate open-air studies. Others incorporate crumbling classical buildings in formal designs dominated by architectural geometry. This is, at one level, a simple topographical view of the type made by many visitors to Rome; at another it is a refined meditation on past grandeur and its inevitable decline.
Gallery label, August 2004
Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.
Catalogue entry
Sir Charles Eastlake 1793–1865
T00665 The Colosseum from the Campo Vaccino 1822
Not inscribed.
Oil on canvas, 20¾ x 25½ (52.5 x 65).
Presented by the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1964.
Coll: See T00664.
Exh: R.A., 1823 (63); Early Devon Painters, Exeter, July–September 1932 (228 and 229 with No. T.664 as ¿ pair of views of the Coliseum’, lent by Colonel M. H. Grant); The First Hundred Years of the Royal Academy, R.A., Winter 1951–52 (260, repr. in Souvenir, p. 52); Arts Council, Early English Landscapes from Colonel Grant’s Collection, London and tour, 1952–53 (19); Italian Art in Britain, R.A., Winter 1960 (238).
Lit: See T00664.
The original title in the R.A. catalogue stated: ‘Painted at Rome’ and this picture with two other views of Rome was among Eastlake’s first contributions to the R.A. Grant (loc. cit.) points out that Rome in Eastlake’s day was infinitely more paintable when the Colosseum was ‘embosomed in picturesque confusion very remote from the smug orderliness of modern municipal-ridden Rome’. The view is taken from the Palatine Hill, which together with the Forum was known till recent times as the Campo Vaccino from its use as an enclosure for cattle intended for market.
Published in The Tate Gallery Report 1964–1965, London 1966.
Explore
- architecture(41,314)
-
- periods and styles(5,202)
-
- classical(1,043)
- places of entertainment(632)
-
- amphitheatre(75)
- townscapes / man-made features(21,691)
-
- townscape(3,313)
- animals: mammals(4,858)
-
- goat(134)
- cities, towns, villages (non-UK)(13,330)
-
- Rome, Colosseum(43)
- Rome, Forum(38)
- Italy(4,478)
You might like
-
Sir Charles Lock Eastlake The Colosseum from the Esquiline
1822 -
Sir Charles Lock Eastlake Lord Byron’s ‘Dream’
1827, exhibited 1829 -
Sir Charles Lock Eastlake Haidée, a Greek Girl
1827, exhibited 1831 -
Sir Charles Lock Eastlake Mrs Charles H. Bellenden Ker
1835 -
Joseph Mallord William Turner View of San Francesco di Paolo, Rome, with the Colosseum Beyond
1819 -
Joseph Mallord William Turner The Colosseum, Rome, from the South
1819 -
Solomon Alexander Hart Interior of a Polish Synagogue at the Moment when the Manuscript of the Law is Elevated
1829–30, exhibited 1830 -
Joseph Mallord William Turner The Colosseum, Rome, from the West
1819 -
Benjamin Robert Haydon The Raising of Lazarus
1821–3 -
Joseph Mallord William Turner Inside the Colosseum, Rome
1819 -
Sir Charles Lock Eastlake Christ Lamenting over Jerusalem
1846 -
Joseph Mallord William Turner Forum Romanum, for Mr Soane’s Museum
exhibited 1826 -
Benjamin Robert Haydon Chairing the Member
1828 -
Benjamin Robert Haydon Punch or May Day
1829 -
Sir Charles Lock Eastlake The Escape of Francesco Novello di Carrara, with his Wife, from the Duke of Milan
exhibited 1850