Dickens Museum Acquires Lost Portrait The Charles Dickens Museum in London has acquired a lost portrait of the author painted in 1843 by Margaret Gillies.
The lost portrait of Charles Dickens as an emerging literary star had been officially lost for over 130 years, and miraculously turned up in a box of trinkets in South Africa in 2017. Painted in late 1843 by Margaret Gillies (1803–1887) during the same weeks Dickens was writing A Christmas Carol, it was last seen in public in 1844 when exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
The portrait was showcased in our exhibition 'Charles Dickens: The Lost Portrait' (Philip Mould & Company, 2018) as it returned to us in time for the 175th anniversary of Dickens’ Christmas masterpiece, first mentioned by the author in a letter dated to a day he was sitting for Gillies.
The portrait will join the permanent collection of the Charles Dickens Museum and is due to be on public display from autumn 2019.
