George Cattermole (1800-1868) was a productive artist who exhibited extensively both in England and abroad. He painted landscapes, seascapes and architectural interiors, but he remains most famous for his historical genre and literary subjects. This watercolour illustrates a passage from the Charles Dickens's early novel The Old Curiosity Shop, first published in 1841. After many problems and much travelling in both London and rural England, Nell and her grandfather find refuge in a small village. But Nell, worn out from her hardships, dies, an event that stunned Dickens's readers. This watercolour actually belonged to Dickens. Following Dickens’s death in 1870, it was bought by his great friend and biographer, John Forster, who later bequeathed it to the V&A.