TWO of Charlotte Brontë’s watercolours have been delivered to the Brontë Parsonage Museum ready for display next year.

The Brontë Society, which runs the Haworth museum, bought the paintings in July during an auction at Sotheby’s.

Experts have attributed both pictures to Charlotte, the writer of classic novel Jane Eyre and the eldest of the tragic Brontë sisters.

The parsonage this week tweeted a picture of the watercolours on a desk at the museum, and said they will be handed to conservation staff so they can be prepared for display in 2016.

One watercolour is a study of a white carnation, and the other depicts a convolvulus, a crocus and an aster.

The pictures were previously unknown and have never been on public display. They are connected to the Sidgwick family, for whom Charlotte Brontë worked as a governess in 1839.

Charlotte is best known for writing novels, such as Jane Eyre, but her early ambition was to earn her living as an artist.

She was an accomplished painter, but came to realise she did not have the necessary level of skill to have a career in this field.

Literature experts said Charlotte’s ability to observe and accurately record detail was a valuable foundation for her written work and a contributing factor in her subsequent success as an author.

Parsonage Museum collections manager, Ann Dinsdale, said staff are delighted to have acquired the two paintings for the museum.

She added: “Although unsigned, they have excellent provenance and are stylistically similar to other Charlotte Brontë paintings already in the Brontë Society’s collection.

“We look forward to putting them on display in the Parsonage as part of Charlotte Brontë’s bicentenary celebrations next year.”

The Brontë Society has also announced a major conference in Manchester as part of its celebrations for Charlotte’s 200th birthday.

The event, at the Midland Hotel from August 19 to 21, will focus on the issue that most concerned Charlotte herself – the position of women in the mid-19th century.

Speakers, who include famous feminist Professor Germaine Greer, will address the subject from many different angles,

Other speakers include Prof Sally Shuttleworth, an expert on the medical and mental problems of women in the early Victorian era; Claire Harman, noted author of the new biography Charlotte Brontë, A Life; and Prof Christine Alexander, who is currently working on the first new scholarly edition of Jane Eyre in more than 40 years.

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