Dolly Varden is an 1842 oil painting by the English artist William Powell Frith featuring the fictional character of Dolly Varden from the 1841 novel Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens.

[1][2] During the early Victorian era there was a fashion for paintings based on works of theatre and literature, generally featuring popular characters and scenes.

Frith, a member of the art group known as The Clique, first met Dickens at the time of the painting.

The two men established a friendship that lasted until the author's death in 1870.

[5] The best known of these is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, London.