London

As a child, I was fascinated by a painting my parents then owned: a portrait of a woman dressed all in black, my great-great-great aunt Kate Perugini. In 1999, at the ‘Millais: Portraits’ exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery I was confronted by the picture once again for the first time in almost two decades.

Kate – or ‘Katey’ as I came to know her – was the younger daughter of Charles and Catherine Dickens, and a renowned artist. She was born at 48 Doughty Street, now The Charles Dickens Museum (the only London home of Dickens to have survived the developers). She was the third of nine surviving children and, according to her siblings, their father’s favourite child.

The Dickens children spent summers in Kent, Italy, Switzerland or France – in 1844 the whole family spent months living in a palazzo outside Genoa – but the majority of their time was spent in London. They left Doughty Street for Devonshire Terrace, Regent’s Park, and, in 1851, they moved back to Bloomsbury. Their new home was Tavistock House – the bus that was bombed on July 7 2005 was outside the site of their old home. When she was 12, Katey started art classes at Bedford College in Bedford Square, the first college in England to provide a university education for women. Katey’s one complaint about London was that she hated Gower Street. She found it a depressing road and later maintained that the childhood days when she’d been most badly behaved were after she’d been made to walk there. Feature continues

In 1858, Katey’s father met and fell passionately in love with the actress Ellen Ternan, who was the same age as Katey. Charles decided to separate from Catherine and the atmosphere at home became increasingly unbearable. Katey’s eldest brother, Charley, moved in with his mother. The rest of them had to stay with their father at his new home in Kent. Desperate to escape a now unhappy family, Katey agreed to marry a good friend, Charlie Collins, a Pre-Raphaelite artist, would-be writer and the brother of Wilkie Collins.

Charlie introduced Katey to his friend, John Everett Millais, who asked to paint her for one of his most famous pictures, ‘The Black Brunswicker’. Kate (as she now chose to be called) and Charlie Collins were married in 1860. The marriage would never be consummated, as Charlie was reputedly impotent.

They honeymooned in France, Belgium and Switzerland, before returning to London. Charlie was very ill and Kate spent much of her life nursing him. In the mid-1860s it seems she began an affair with another Pre-Raphaelite, Val Prinsep, who she met through their mutual friend, Lord Leighton. Kate was a regular visitor to Leighton’s home in Holland Park (now a museum) and it was here that she met an Italian artist, Carlo Perugini.In 1873, Charlie suffered a hideously lingering death from stomach cancer and Kate nursed him tirelessly. Although their marriage had been sexless – Charlie was probably gay – but they were devoted friends. After being widowed, Kate refused Val Prinsep’s proposal and married Carlo Perugini.

To mark the occasion, Millais – now one of Kate’s closest friends – painted a portrait of her in a black mourning dress, the same portrait that fascinated me as a child. The Peruginis lived in Victoria Road, near High Street Kensington, and shared a double artists’ studio. After the tragic death of their baby son in 1877, Kate and Carlo threw themselves into their work; this was the first year Kate was accepted to exhibit at the Royal Academy. From then on, she exhibited regularly at the RA and the Society of Women Artists. Her works are mostly stunning portraits of children. No doubt they would be considered twee by many modern art historians but Kate was a commercial artist who needed to earn money and she painted what would sell. Kate suffered regular bouts of depression. She also suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder
(OCD). She was at times cantankerous, at times adorable. Her friends were fiercely loyal and her critics no doubt equally vociferous.

In researching her life I discovered a formidable woman who lived to be almost 90, who defied popular Victorian morality and did
as she pleased. Although her father was Charles Dickens, there was surprisingly little money to go round and she worked tirelessly to support herself, becoming more successful than the majority of her brothers. Now, when I walk through Bloomsbury or Kensington, I can imagine her on those same streets, determined to make herself a success. Towards the end of her life, she told a friend that although she was happy to be loved for her father’s sake, ‘I always wanted to be loved for my own sake’. Now, she is.

‘Katey: The Life and Loves of Dickens’s Artist Daughter’ by Lucinda Hawksley is published by Doubleday at £20.