The Lost Portrait
The lost portrait of Charles Dickens as an emerging literary star at the age of 31, officially lost for over 130 years, has miraculously turned up in a box of trinkets in South Africa. 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 has now returned to the UK and can be seen on display at the Charles Dickens Museum.
