Charles Dickens

(1812 – 1870)

Charles Dickens, the greatest novelist of the age, established his name with The Pickwick Papers (1836), and at the time this portrait was made had just published Nicholas Nickleby.

Dickens and the artist Daniel Maclise had become close friends the summer before this portrait was painted. Dickens recorded in a letter of June 28, 1839, that “Maclise has made another face of me, which all people say is astonishing.”

By Daniel Maclise (1806-1870)
Oil on canvas, 1839
Tate, London; on loan to the National Portrait Gallery, London
© Tate, London