This week’s bicentenary of the birth of Wilkie Collins – author of The Moonstone (1868) and The Woman in White, who regularly collaborated on plays and stories with his friend Charles Dickens – has rightly brought the Victorian author back to prominence.
But less is known about his younger brother Charles (“Charlie”) Allston Collins, an artist and writer whose meticulous paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy and who was closely involved with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB).
His most famous painting, Convent Thoughts (1850), shows a novice nun in a garden, contemplating her future. A contemporary reviewer, in the London Weekly Chronicle in June 1851, described it as “all that is perfect in painting”. Charlie had an excellent eye for colour and recreated the nuances of nature and portraiture beautifully in oils. The critic John Ruskin was particularly enthusiastic about his work, writing of Convent Thoughts: “as a mere botanical study of the Water Lily and Alisma, as well as of the common lily and several other garden flowers, this picture would be invaluable to me, and I heartily wish it were mine.” […]
First published in The Telegraph on 10th January 2024. Read full article online.