Dolly Varden by William Powell Frith, RA (1819-1909). c.1842-49. Oil on wood. Support: 273 × 216 mm frame: 470 × 411 × 75 mm. Collection: Tate. Reference T00041. Bequeathed by Mrs E.J. Thwaites, 1955. Image kindly made available by the gallery under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported) licence.
This is a bit more than one of the "fancy portraits" described in the Tate's display caption, which it defines as portraits painted "from imagination" and then named them "after characters from popular literature." It expresses a definite view of Dolly Varden in Dickens's Barnaby Rudge (1839), "the most unashamedly sexual" of Dickens's "pretty young heroines" (Trotter 33). According to Trotter, as a friend of the author, Frith saw through Dickens' "mixed feelings about giddiness" (37), and set himself to express Dolly's giddiness more forthrightly. This he did by taking up the detail of her cherry-coloured hat ribbon, just the item John Ruskin had a particular spite against (see Trotter 36-37), and accentuating her laughing, "come hither" expression with the frivolous bow. Still, there is something delightful about it here, and such was the popularity of the costume in general that in 1872 even the earnest Charlotte Yonge be seen wearing it (Ehrman 116).
Bibliography
"Display Caption." Tate. Web. 7 November 2022.
Ehrman, Edwina. "Frith and Fashion." William Powell Frith: Painting the Victorian Age. Edited by Mark Bills and Vivien Knight. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2006. 111-29.
Trotter, David. "Dickens and Frith." William Powell Frith: Painting the Victorian Age. Edited by Mark Bills and Vivien Knight. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2006. 29-39.
Created 7 November 2022