Charles Dickens, Fred Barnard and the Broadway Colony
Today, 198 years ago, on 7th February 1812, Charles John Huffam Dickens was born. Born in Portsmouth, Dickens was one of the most popular authors of the Victorian era. Dickens first started writing when he became a reporter, writing for London newspapers and magazines.
Dickens went on to write a great number of novels until his death in 1870. The majority of Dickens’s novels were published serially in weekly or monthly instalments by the publishers Chapman & Hall and it was Chapman & Hall that commissioned Frederick Barnard (1846 - 1896) to illustrate 9 volumes of Dickens’s works published between 1871 and 1879. These included David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, Bleak House and A Tale of Two Cities.
Frederick or Fred Barnard later moved to Broadway in the 1880s with his wife Alice (nee Faraday) and they became members of the Broadway Colony of artists living in the village at that time. The daughters of Fred and Alice Barnard, Polly and Dorothy, are the two girls depicted in John Singer Sargent’s iconic painting Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose that was painted in Broadway between 1885 and 1886 and is currently on display in the Tate in London.