''Convent Thoughts'' (1850–51; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford Charles Allston Collins (

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

25 January 1828 – 9 April 1873) was a British painter, writer, and illustrator associated with the

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), later known as the Pre-Raphaelites, was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossett ...

Life and work

Early years

Collins was born in

Hampstead Hampstead () is an area in London, England, which lies northwest of Charing Cross, located mainly in the London Borough of Camden, with a small part in the London Borough of Barnet. It borders Highgate and Golders Green to the north, Belsiz ...

, north London, the son of landscape and genre painter William Collins. His older brother was the novelist

Wilkie Collins William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) was an English novelist and playwright known especially for ''The Woman in White (novel), The Woman in White'' (1860), a mystery novel and early sensation novel, and for ''The Moonsto ...

. He was educated at

Stonyhurst College Stonyhurst College or Stonyhurst is a co-educational Catholic Public school (United Kingdom), public school providing education for boarding school, boarding and day school, day pupils, adhering to the Society of Jesus, Jesuit tradition. It is ...

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated ''Lancs'') is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, and the Irish Sea to ...

Painting career

Collins met

John Everett Millais Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet ( , ; 8 June 1829 – 13 August 1896) was an English painter and illustrator who was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was a child prodigy who, aged eleven, became the youngest s ...

and became influenced by the ideas of the Pre-Raphaelites, completing his painting '' Berengaria's Alarm'' in 1850. This depicted the wife of King Richard the Lionheart noticing her missing husband's girdle offered for sale by a peddlar. The flattened modelling, emphasis on pattern making, and imagery of embroidery were all characteristic features of Pre-Raphaelitism. Millais proposed that Collins should become a member of the Brotherhood, but Thomas Woolner and

William Michael Rossetti William Michael Rossetti (25 September 1829 – 5 February 1919) was an English writer and critic. Early life Born in London, Rossetti was a son of exiled Italian scholar Gabriele Rossetti and his wife Frances Polidori, Frances Rossetti '' ...

objected, so he never became an official member. Collins fell in love with Maria Francesca Rossetti, but she rejected him. He became increasingly ascetic and introspective. These attitudes were expressed in Collins's best-known work, '' Convent Thoughts'', which depicted a nun in a convent garden. Collins went on to exhibit many highly devotional images.

Literary career

In the late 1850s, however, he abandoned art to follow his brother into a writing career. His most successful literary works were humorous essays collected together under the title ''The Eye Witness'' (1860).

Later life

Collins married

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and Social criticism, social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by ...

's daughter

Kate Kate may refer to: People and fictional characters * Kate (given name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name or nickname * Gyula Káté (born 1982), Hungarian amateur boxer * Lauren Kate (born 1981), American author o ...

in 1860, and later was engaged to illustrate Dickens's unfinished novel '' The Mystery of Edwin Drood''. He completed the cover but was too ill to do the rest. He died from cancer in 1873 and is buried in

Brompton Cemetery Brompton Cemetery (originally the West of London and Westminster Cemetery) is since 1852 the first (and only) London cemetery to be Crown Estate, Crown property, managed by The Royal Parks, in West Brompton in the Royal Borough of Kensington a ...

, London. Lucinda Hawksley, ''Katey: The Life and Loves of Dickens's Artist Daughter'', New York, Doubleday, 2006.

References

External links

C A Collins online
(ArtCyclopedia)

("Wilkie Collins' Family") * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Collins, Charles Allston English writers Pre-Raphaelite painters 1828 births 1873 deaths Burials at Brompton Cemetery People educated at Stonyhurst College 19th-century English painters English male painters 19th-century English male artists Pre-Raphaelite illustrators English fantasy writers Collins family (England) Dickens family