Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.
Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Along with his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds, he is considered one of the most important British artists of the second half of the 18th century. He painted quickly, and the works of his maturity are characterised by a light palette and easy strokes. Despite being a prolific portrait painter, Gainsborough gained greater satisfaction from his landscapes. He is credited as the originator of the 18th-century British landscape school. Gainsborough was a founding member of the Royal Academy.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner who formed a seven-member "Brotherhood" partly modelled on the Nazarene movement. The Brotherhood was only ever a loose association and their principles were shared by other artists of the time, including Ford Madox Brown, Arthur Hughes and Marie Spartali Stillman. Later followers of the principles of the Brotherhood included Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and John William Waterhouse.
Events from the year 1839 in art.
Daniel Maclise was an Irish history painter, literary and portrait painter, and illustrator, who worked for most of his life in London, England.
William Powell Frith was an English painter specialising in genre subjects and panoramic narrative works of life in the Victorian era. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1853, presenting The Sleeping Model as his Diploma work. He has been described as the "greatest British painter of the social scene since Hogarth".
Sarah Biffin, also known as Sarah Biffen, Sarah Beffin or by her married name Mrs E. M. Wright, was an English painter born with no arms and only vestigial legs. She was born in 1784 in Somerset. Despite her disability she learned to read and write, and to paint using her mouth.
Charles Jervas was an Irish portrait painter, translator, and art collector of the early 18th century.
Bernard Mulrenin, was an Irish painter best known for his miniatures.
Robert Ronald McIan, also Robert Ranald McIan, was a Scottish actor and painter. He is best known for romanticised depictions of Scottish clansmen, their battles and domestic life.
Catherine Elizabeth Macready Perugini was an English painter of the Victorian era and the daughter of Catherine Dickens and Charles Dickens.
The Death of Nelson is a wall painting in the Royal Gallery of the Palace of Westminster by the Irish artist Daniel Maclise. A finished study for it, in the form of a painting, is in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, Merseyside.
Emma Brownlow (1832–1905) was a Victorian era artist who is best known for her paintings depicting scenes from life at the Foundling Hospital in London.
The Wrestlers is an oil painting on millboard by English artist William Etty, painted around 1840 and currently in the York Art Gallery, in York, England. It depicts a wrestling match between a black man and a white man, both glistening with sweat and under an intense light emphasising their curves and musculature. While little documentation of the painting exists prior to 1947, it is likely that it was painted over a period of three evenings at the life class of the Royal Academy.
Lumb Stocks was a British engraver. In a long career he produced engravings from paintings by notable artists of the day.
The letters of Charles Dickens, of which more than 14,000 are known, range in date from about 1821, when Dickens was 9 years old, to 8 June 1870, the day before he died. They have been described as "invariably idiosyncratic, exuberant, vivid, and amusing…widely recognized as a significant body of work in themselves, part of the Dickens canon". They were written to family, friends, and the contributors to his literary periodicals, who included many of the leading writers of the day. Their letters to him were almost all burned by Dickens because of his horror at the thought of his private correspondence being laid open to public scrutiny. The reference edition of Dickens's letters is the 12-volume Pilgrim Edition, edited by Graham Storey et al. and published by Oxford University Press.
Delia Mary, Lady Millar C.V.O., was the wife of the British art historian and Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, Sir Oliver Nicholas Millar and an art historian in her own right. A specialist in the art of the Victorian era, she was appointed Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in recognition of her services to the Royal Collection.
Charles Dickens in His Study is an oil on canvas painting by English artist William Powell Frith, created in 1859. The painting is signed and dated at the lower left, 'W P Frith fecit 1859'. It is held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London.
The Battle of Camperdown is a 1799 history painting by the American-born painter John Singleton Copley. It depicts the conclusion to the Battle of Camperdown on 11 October 1797, which was fought in the North Sea between fleets of the Royal Navy and the Batavian Navy during the War of the First Coalition. A decisive British victory, Copley's painting shows British Admiral Adam Duncan accepting the surrender of the Batavian Admiral Jan Willem de Winter. Its full title is The Surrender of the Dutch Admiral de Winter to Admiral Duncan at the Battle of Camperdown.
Portrait of William Harrison Ainsworth is a c.1834 portrait painting by the Irish artist Daniel Maclise depicting the English author William Harrison Ainsworth. Ainsworth was a popular author of historical novels and a contemporary and friend of Dickens.
