Margaret Gillies (1803-87), Charles John Huffman Dickens (1812-1870), wearing dark jacket and cravat, white waistcoat, his dark hair worn collar-length in long curls, 1843, Watercolour and gouache.

LONDON.- Today, the Charles Dickens Museum announced that, following a successful fundraising campaign, it has acquired and secured the future of the ‘lost portrait’ of Dickens. Recently re-discovered by Philip Mould & Co, the exquisite portrait miniature by Margaret Gillies has found a permanent home at the Museum at 48 Doughty Street, the London residence where Dickens wrote Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby, completed The Pickwick Papers and began Barnaby Rudge. 

Since launching the Lost Portrait Appeal in November 2018, the Museum has received magnificently generous donations from admirers of Dickens from all over the world and substantial grants from Art Fund and the Arts Council England/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, to meet the £180, 000 target and enable the portrait to join its permanent collection. 

The Gillies portrait will go on display from 24th October 2019 and will be a highlight of the festive season. The portrait will become a regular part of the Museum’s programme of displays, though it will require times away from display to preserve the quality of the 176-year-old watercolour. 

Dr Cindy Sughrue, Director of the Charles Dickens Museum, said, “We are so excited to be bringing the ‘lost’ portrait home and are extremely grateful for, and touched by, the generous support that we have received from individual donors all over the world, and our major funders, Art Fund and the Arts Council England/V&A Purchase Grant Fund. It is a magnificent affirmation of the enduring appeal of Dickens’s writing and the worldwide fascination that he continues to inspire. We are honoured to have worked alongside our partners in this endeavour, Philip Mould & his team, who brought the painting back into the public eye. My thoughts go back to last year, when Philip first contacted us and showed us an image of the painting. It was a memorable, heart-in-mouth moment, to say the least. This is a vibrant portrayal of Dickens, at 31 years of age, already known the world over but with so much still ahead of him and in the midst of writing arguably his best-loved work, A Christmas Carol.” 

In 2017, the portrait miniature covered in mould was sold in an auction of household goods in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, in a box of trinkets alongside a brass dish, an old recorder and a metal toy lobster. Last year, the painting arrived at the Philip Mould & Co Gallery in London and, following conservation and provenance research, was confirmed to be the portrait of Charles Dickens (1812-1870) painted by Margaret Gillies (1803-1887) over six sittings in 1843. 

After the publication of A Christmas Carol, with Dickens firmly in the public eye, Gillies’ portrait was exhibited at the 1844 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and it quickly became the defining image of Dickens. On seeing the portrait, the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning said it “has the dust and mud of humanity about him, notwithstanding those eagle eyes”. However, in 1886, Gillies noted that she had ‘lost sight of the portrait itself’. It remained lost until the South African auction in 2017.