Friday, 5 April 2024

“Dickens’s Dream”.



“Dickens's Dream”.
Photo credit: Charles Dickens Museum, London.

Text and Illustration from ART UK

This painting by Robert William Buss, an enthusiastic admirer of Charles Dickens’s writings, was painted five years after the author’s death in 1870.

The posthumous painting of Dickens celebrates his vivid imagination and illustrates characters from all his books, spanning 'Pickwick Papers' to 'Edwin Drood', surrounding Dickens in his Library at Gad’s Hill, Rochester, Kent, England.

The setting was modelled on Luke Filde's engraving, 'The Empty Chair', and the figure of Dickens was copied from a well-known photograph by John Watkins (from 1863).

Zephyrinus has visited Dickens's home, Gad's Hill, Rochester, Kent, and has stood in Dickens's Library (see picture, above). He can vouch that the picture exactly captures how the Library was, in Dickens's time, and how it is, today.

Listen to one of Charles Dickens's greatest stories, “Oliver Twist”, HERE

The Charles Dickens Museum Web-Site can be found HERE

2 comments:

  1. "Zephyrinus has visited Dickens's home, Gad's Hill, Rochester, Kent, and has stood in Dickens's Library (see picture, above). He can vouch that the picture exactly captures how the Library was, in Dickens's time, and how it is, today." What an experience! Pardon this commenter's "envy." To be in a place where such a marvelous literary mind spun such fine extraordinary works, like a very busy silkworm moth caterpillar. - Note by Dante P

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    1. Thank you, Dante P, for your welcome Comment. It is, indeed, a great privilege and pleasure to be able to visit Dickens's home, Gad's Hill, which is nearby to Zephyrinus's Mansion.

      The man, Dickens, was/is a phenomenon, of course. Such writings; such clarity of mind; such upheavals he caused in Victorian society by highlighting the outrageous deficiencies in caring for the Poor and for unwanted Children.

      Besides the pleasure of visiting Dickens's home, and going into his Study (see picture, above), where he wrote several of his magnificent books, Zephyrinus had the great privilege of meeting Dickens's great-great-Grand-Daughter, who happened to be visiting at the same time.

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