Found: Dickens as he looked when he wrote A Christmas Carol
COVERED in mould and lying unloved in a box of trinkets, the portrait had seen better days. But the buyer who bought the box as a job lot for £27 at a South African antiques sale had stumbled upon something extraordinary.
The young man in the picture is a 31-year-old Charles Dickens and the ivory miniature a portrait lost to historians since the middle of the 19th-century.
Restored and authenticated, it is back in Britain and the Charles Dickens Museum in London is trying to raise £180,000 to buy it. Dr Cindy Sughrue, the museum’s director, said: “Because Dickens was so popular in his day we never thought there was anything connected to him that could be left to find. We knew the portrait had existed but assumed it had not survived. The discovery is truly thrilling.”
She added: “Ask anyone to draw a picture of Dickens and it will be middle-aged, with a scraggy beard and dishevelled hair. This portrait changes our perception. It is intimate and engaging. There is something really alive in this picture that I have never seen in any other of Dickens.”
The picture was painted in 1843
– the year he published A Christmas Carol – by Margaret Gillies, a professional artist and social campaigner who knew Dickens well. By that time, he had published The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge, and was a household name. The museum has a letter in the collection from the author to Gillies, confirming a date for the sitting and saying he was looking forward to it. Other letters written during that week show that he was actually working on the story of Ebenezer Scrooge.
The portrait, measuring about four inches in height, was last seen in public in 1844 when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. But it disappeared, and Gillies wrote in 1886 that its whereabouts were unknown.
It is thought the portrait ended up in South Africa via a relative of the artist. Gillies’s adopted daughter was married to a son of George Henry Lewes, partner to George Eliot, the novelist. The Lewes family is known to have emigrated to Kwazulu-natal.
It was there the portrait was found and the buyer contacted Philip Mould, a British-based art dealer, who formally identified it and went on to buy it. Mr Mould said: “The buyer was one of those people who enjoys a country sale. He came across a job lot and had to buy the whole tray of contents – it cost £27.
“He had a hunch it could be something interesting, so contacted us. We bought it from him and are keen for the Dickens Museum to have it. “This portrait adds greatly to our perception of the young Dickens and is so different to the avuncular bearded man we know.” The portrait will be on display at the museum at 48 Doughty Street, London, the writer’s former home, until Jan 25. Dr Sughrue said: “We don’t want it to disappear again.”