Charles Dickens is one of the world's most celebrated authors and was a powerful agent for social change in his lifetime. His portrait, painted by Margaret Gillies, a supporter of women's suffrage and an esteemed painter, was completed over six sittings in 1843 and later exhibited at The Royal Academy. It somehow left the artist's possession, and was not seen again publicly for over 170 years, when it was unearthed in 2017 in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. It was found in an auction by an antiques dealer, grouped with a batch of junk items including a metal lobster, sitting on a tray fashioned from bits of a beer packing case. Its whereabouts all these years remains a mystery, although it is suggested by research done at Philip Mould and Co., that its passage to South Africa came about through the families of George Eliot and G. H Lewes, both of whom had close associations with Gillies.
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| When she saw the portrait, the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning said that Dickens had "the dust and mud of humanity around him, notwithstanding those eagle eyes." |
That the miniature, painted with great skill and sensitivity on ivory, survived in such a sad state of repair with mould disfiguring the portrait and the original Gilt and Ormulu frame partially obscured by modern velvet, is little short of miraculous. To add to the dramatic unfolding of events, as the portrait was beginning its long journey back to the UK, it risked being burnt by the authorities because of the ban on the export of ivory.
Now the challenge is to secure the the portrait for the nation, where it will reside in the permanent collection at The Dickens Museum, 48 Doughty Street, Bloomsbury, home toThe Dickens Family from March 1837 to December 1839.
I was privileged to view this portrait miniature at Philip Mould's splendid Pall Mall gallery just over a week ago, when he was in conversation with the eminent Dickens biographer Claire Tomalin and Dr. Cindy Sughrue, Director of The Dickens Museum.
This portrait is perhaps the single most revealing artefact of this period of Dickens' life. The image itself is well known, as it formed the basis for an engraving which was used beside the frontispiece in numerous editions of his novels. By then Dickens was world famous, and yet his eyes, the set of his chin, the five o'clock shadow, the untamed waves of hair set in a pose not completely straight ahead show his journey, his impassioned desire, his vulnerability, and according to Dr Cindy Sughrue, the true colour of his eyes, blue flecked with brown, described in so many ways but not properly revealed until this small masterpiece was brought back into the world.
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| 48 Doughty Street, Bloomsbury, London |
Gillies was aged around forty when she created the portrait. Cindy imagines that she was the perfect artist to capture him at his peak, as someone whom he would not find intimidating, and a woman who believed in what he was trying to achieve. Dickens had recently joined the Unitarian Church where she was also a member.
He was characterised by passion, vulnerability and nocturnal walking - he walked at night to think through his work and to see his subjects on the street, once walking the thirty miles from his house in London to his house in Kent. Night Walks, his telling essay, is a non-fiction work Cindy recommends we read to understand the background to his work and indeed the mood of the lost miniature. The subtle expression and elegant painting style illuminate Dickens' features on the ivory. Whilst he was sitting for this, he wrote A Christmas Carol, a most scathing social commentary, and a shrewd departure from the pamphlet he originally intended to pen. It is still a work known and loved around the world, a book and a film that epitomises Christmas time for so many. His view was that fiction would be more powerful and less preachy.
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| Dickens' study, proposed new home for The Lost Portrait |
The museum has been fundraising in earnest to purchase the portrait and so far has raised a third of what it needs, but there is still £120,000 to go. When I asked Cindy where the portrait would find its permanent home within the museum last week she was not ready to say. Since then she has said the following: "The Dickens portrait will almost certainly go into one of the case in the study". To me this is the perfect home for the portrait, the spot where he wrote Oliver Twist, Pickwick Papers and Nicholas Nickleby.
Will you help The Dickens Museum give this portrait a permanent home where all the world can come to enjoy its mysteries and share in Dickens' life and legacy? Please donate whatever you can and pass this link on to anyone who has ever read, thought about, or believed in Charles Dickens.
To donate use the link below or got to Charles Dickens Museum website
Further Reading:
Dickens The Lost Portrait, catalogue, Philip Mould & Company
Charles Dickens, A Life by by Claire Tomalin
The Invisible Woman. The Story of Nelly Terman and Charles Dickens, By Clare Tomalin
The Other Dickens By Lilian Nayder
Special Thanks to:
Philip Mould, OBE
Emma Rutherford
Claire Tomalin,
Dr Cindy Sughrue, OBE
Lawrence Hendra
Lucinda Dickens Hawkseley
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