Dickens art sells for £6,200 at Staffordshire auction
A painting hailing from the personal collection of author Charles Dickens sold for an impressive £6,200 at a Staffordshire auction house.
The lithograph, depicting a desert scene entitled A Recollection of the desert on the approach of the Simoon, was presented to Dickens by his friend, the artist David Roberts, in 1850.
It later featured in an 1870 catalogue of the pictures, drawings and objects of the late writer, and 150 years on, generated significant interest among bidders when it appeared in Cuttlestones’ Autumn Antiques auction in Penkridge.
The winning bid, which shattered an estimate of £500–£700, came from a London buyer who travelled up to view the painting the day before to the sale. On the day he bid over the phone against keen internet contenders.
Dickens, whose writing style has often been said to possess the vividness of a picture, was involved with the 19th-century art world in several ways. He made friends with artists, sat for portraits, collected pictures and spoke at banquets at the Royal Academy of Art.
His friend Roberts, a Scottish painter, became especially known for a prolific series of detailed lithograph prints of Egypt and the Near East that he produced from sketches he made during long tours of the region in the late 1830s.
The desert scene fetched the best price of a strong paintings section at the auction. Other highlights included a Continental School oil on canvas study of a seated gentleman with moustache which sold for £1,100. One landscape watercolour sold to a bidder from Cambodia.
Managing director and head auctioneer Ben Gamble said: "Over 75 per cent of the lots found buyers and, with a healthy turnout in the room plus a strong contingent of commission, telephone and online bidders, lots sold far and wide."
