Dickensblog

The Lost Portrait goes home

The Dickens Museum has raised enough money to purchase Margaret Gillies's "Lost Portrait" of Dickens! It will be on regular display in the Museum, beginning in October.

A fashionable tribute to Miss Havisham

Now that's how you handle a breakup! Young Australian designer Madison Hislop was inspired by her own romantic troubles to create a collection in honor of Miss Havisham, which won her a scholarship to study design in New York. According to Broadsheet, "In the new designs, weighty felted cloth contrasts with sheer flowing fabrics, while high collars, exaggerated cuffs and low hemlines echo Miss Havisham’s Victorian origins." Photos of the collection can be seen at Hislop's website.

Dickens and van Gogh

Did you know that Dickens was Vincent van Gogh's favorite author? Tate Britain is getting the word out with its exhibition "Van Gogh and Britain." In its review of the exhibition, The Guardian explains, 

Van Gogh loved Dickens and Eliot for the way they took the everyday details of modest lives and elevated them into something luminous. Here was social realism, in all its unloveliness, transformed into a kind of moral grandeur. A few years later, and on his way to becoming the artist who would invest old shoes, ragged sunflowers and potato-eating peasants with powerful feeling, Van Gogh wrote to his brother: “My whole life is aimed at making the things from everyday life that Dickens describes and these artists draw.”

In fact, the paper reports, van Gogh's beloved Starry Night is said to be based on one of the most powerful scenes in Hard Times.

The Economist adds, "In a number of the paintings in 'L’Arlésienne', a series made between 1888 and 1890 . . . van Gogh carefully inscribed 'A Christmas Carol' on the spine of a book. The choice of title and author was deliberate: he had read the novel every year since childhood. When van Gogh moved back in with his parents in 1879 they complained that he did nothing but devour Charles Dickens from morning to night."

Sounds like our kind of guy!  

A closer look at the lost portrait of Dickens

As I mentioned earlier, Margaret Gillies's recently rediscovered portrait of Dickens is on display this week at the Dickens Museum. London Live has a video showing the portrait in its current surroundings and giving more background information on it.

'Lost portrait' to go on display at Dickens Museum

The recently rediscovered Dickens portrait by Margaret Gillies will be on display at the museum April 2-7, to aid in the efforts to raise enough money to purchase it. The Guardian has more. If any of our U.K. readers stop by to see it, we'd love to hear your thoughts!

Birthday festivities

Dickens's birthday is coming up, and the Dickens Birthplace Museum in Portsmouth will offer free admission to celebrate! Go here to learn more. In the meantime, Dickens fans in Philadelphia held their annual birthday bash by the Dickens statue in Clark Park. Philly Voice offers a glimpse into their hallowed tradition.  

Happy 175th birthday to 'A Christmas Carol'!

The tributes and honors have been pouring in from all over! Here's a roundup:

• The Paris Review, Vox, and The Christian Science Monitor all have articles about the anniversary. BuzzFeed has a Christmas Carol quiz. BBC News offers suggestions of celebratory Dickensian food and a gin punch recipe in honor of the day.
• The Dickens Museum held an unabridged reading of the book, hosted by Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, and also asked various Dickens experts to weigh in on the question of which movie adaptation is the best. 
• The New York Public Library is hosting an exhibition on the book and also released an Insta Novel version.
• And finally, here's my own tribute.

It's lovely to see Dickens's "ghostly little book" still so loved and appreciated all these years later for all it's given us. If you've seen any tributes that I missed, please post them in the comments!

Dickens autograph sold at auction

The signature, accompanied by a quote from A Christmas Carol, brought over $23,000.

Lost and found: Missing portrait of Dickens discovered

A man who paid a little over $30 for a bunch of junk at a sale in South Africa discovered a treasure in it: a long-lost portrait of 31-year-old Charles Dickens, painted by artist and suffragette Margaret Gillies. Art dealer and TV personality Philip Mould, who helped identify the portrait, says, “He was moments away from basically throwing away this fungus-covered picture and then he started looking at it and realised that the face was very compelling.” Mould says that the portrait "ranks among the most exciting things we have ever discovered."

The painting has been restored and had its official unveiling today at Mould's gallery, according to Dickens scholar Dr. Pete Orford, who was there. The Dickens Museum is raising money to buy it so it can be put on permanent display there.

Always check your garage sale boxes of junk carefully, folks -- you never know what might turn up!

New 'Tale of Two Cities' necklace

Etsy shop Poppet's Widgets recently held a contest to submit literary quotations to appear on new necklaces. I sent in a quote from A Tale of Two Cities, which was one of the three winners! To see the quote and to get the necklace, go here. (Special thanks for great customer service; when I had trouble using the fastener on the ball chain, they quickly sent a different chain for free!)