Charles Dickens Favorite Daughter The Life Loves And Art Of Katey Dickens Perugini Lucinda Hawksley by Lucinda Hawksley 9780762796946, 0762796944 instant download after payment.

One of my most vivid memories from childhood is of a painting my parents owned. I loved it and would stare at it wondering who the beautiful woman was, dressed all in black standing with her back to the viewer, her head turned just enough to enable you to see her face, but not quite enough to prevent her from being mysterious. Two aspects particularly fascinated me: the bustle of her dress with its thick satin bow perched on the top and the way her hair was arranged, which I would try to emulate (without success).

I remember asking my father who the person in the painting was. He told me she was Kate, Charles Dickens’ daughter, and my great-great-great aunt. The painter, he said, was John Millais, a very famous artist. At the age of eight, I was not particularly interested in Millais, but the desire to find out more about Kate, or Katey as I came to know her, intensified. Later, while I was studying for a post-graduate degree in the history of art, her name—in its several incarnations—kept appearing: Katey Dickens, Kate Collins, Kate Perugini. Usually mentioned as an adjunct of her famous father, she was however also given separate status as an artist, as a model, as one of Lord Leighton’s circle, and as the wife of two artists.