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Art history scholarship between the 1820s and the 1870s: The role of the Eastlake Library at the National Gallery

A fully-funded PhD studentship in partnership with Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen

Collaborative Doctoral Partnership

The National Gallery offers a small number of Collaborative Doctoral Partnership studentships, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and run in partnership with higher education institutions. These studentships focus on specific themes relevant to the Gallery's collection and wider research themes.

Research project

Focusing on the National Gallery’s Eastlake Library, the founding collection of over 2,000 volumes acquired in 1870 from the widow of the Gallery’s first Director, Sir Charles Eastlake, the project will examine the part played by the Library in Eastlake’s career, as well as the international scholarly context for emerging specialist art libraries in the 19th century. It will investigate the ways in which the Library supported the development of the Gallery’s collections, and how its role compares with that of other art libraries during this critical period in the intellectual development of art history, which saw a transformation in the role of public art museums and the establishment of the discipline in continental European universities.