Charles Edward Perugini was born in Naples in 1839, but the family came over to England when he was a boy, and he would later take British nationality. An aspiring and promising artist, he spent several years studying art in Europe as a young man, returning to England again in 1863 as a protégé of Frederic Leighton, whom he had met in Rome and Paris — where Leighton painted his portrait (above right) in 1855. With Leighton's "encouragement and financial help," he returned to England, where the younger man "may have worked for a time as his studio assistant" (Wood 366). He may have modelled for him, too (see Hawksley 191). Perugini soon started exhibiting his own work. Now a rising star of the London art world, in 1874 he married the recently widowed Kate, younger daughter and third child of Charles Dickens. Kate's first husband had been Charles Allston Collins, the younger brother of the novelist Wilkie Collins. Perugini had entered into the highest echelons of Victorian culture. Christopher Wood describes his own oeuvre as comprised largely of "elegant ladies in interiors, sometimes with a romantic or humorous theme" (366). — Jacqueline Banerjee
Works
Bibliography
Barrington, Mrs Russell. The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton. Vol. I. London: George Allen, Ruskin House, 1906. Volume I Project Gutenberg. Web. 25 September 2024.
"Frederic, Lord Leighton, PRA (British 1830-1896): Portrait of Charles Edward Perugini (1839-1918)." Bonham's. Web. 25 September 2024. https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/14218/lot/211/
Hawksley, Lucinda. Charles Dickens' Favorite Daughter: The Life, Loves, and Art of Katey Dickens Perugini. Guilford, Connecticut: Lyons Press, 2013.
Wood, Christopher. A Dictionary of Victorian Painters. 2nd ed. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors' Club, 1978.
Created 25 September 2024