Picturing Dickens

In this Olympic year, when we feel less guilty than usual about promoting and celebrating all things British, it is appropriate to be lauding our greatest writers. Shakespeare is commemorated at the British Museum, but what about Dickens? Unbelievably, in what is after all the bicentenary of his birth, the Charles Dickens Museum in Doughty Street is closed. Thank goodness the Watts Gallery has had the initiative to mount an exhibition devoted to Dickens’s relationship with art — at least somewhere the spirits of Phiz, Dolly Varden and Little Nell may disport themselves with Olympic pizazz in a museum setting. That is, if you think Little Nell would be up for it…

Dickens is frequently praised for the vividness of his description, indeed for the very visual nature of his writing. He didn’t, however, write much about art, though he numbered many artists (including Wilkie, Maclise, Frith and Landseer) among his friends.