| Summary: | During Charles Eastlake’s directorship of the National Gallery (1855-65), the collection was transformed into a visual survey of the history of western European painting. He acquired hitherto unrepresented schools of painting and implemented new ways to display and catalogue them. His knowledge was indebted to interactions with leading figures of the art world, especially on the Continent. This article explores his early and seminal friendship with Johann David Passavant, who became director of the Städel Museum, Frankfurt, focusing on their unpublished correspondence of the mid-1840s, preserved in Frankfurt University Library and the National Art Library, London. The article shows how their discussions increased their understanding of the origins and early development of oil painting and honed their art-historical methods of working into an empirical, source-based and collaborative practice. These matters were important for the impact they had on Eastlake’s pioneering book Materials for a History of Oil Painting (1847) and on Eastlake and Passavant’s work as museum directors.
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