Hill & Adamson
1844-1845
Miss Elizabeth Rigby (Lady Eastlake)

Calotype
20.6 x 15.3 cm (8 1/8 x 6 ins) (sheet)
 
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Museum purchase with funds donated by The Tyche Foundation, Abbott Lawrence Fund, and Lucy Dalbiac Luard Fund, Accession no: 2007.826
 
David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson were an important early photographic team working in Edinburgh in the 1840s. They photographed Miss Elizabeth Rigby, the distinguished author of books and articles on art, photography, literature, and travel, on several occasions after she settled in Edinburgh in 1842. A few years after this photograph was made, Miss Rigby, aged forty, married Sir Charles Eastlake and became part of the social and intellectual elite of London. Sir Eastlake became the President of the Royal Academy, Director of the National Gallery, and the first President of the Photographic Society (subsequently renamed the Royal Photographic Society). Lady Eastlake later wrote that one of Hill & Adamson's portraits of her was the first specimen of photography that that Prince Albert was shown.
 
LL/96578