“Agatha Christie: Unfinished Portrait” celebrates the author’s 125th birthday.
Photo: Courtesy the Christie Archive

To celebrate the 125 years since the birth of Agatha Christie, one of the best-selling novelists of all time, London’s Bankside Gallery will stage an exhibition of previously unseen photographs of the British author.

Agatha Christie surfing
Photo: Courtesy the Christie Archive

Each photograph, taken from the archives of the Christie family, will be accompanied by a quote by the writer, taken either from her published novels or from her unpublished private correspondence (see Agatha Christie’s Long Lost Diamonds Turn Up at Auction).

Also on display will be a portrait that the Austrian expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka painted in 1969 to commemorate Christie’s 80th birthday. 

Agatha and Archie Christie 
Photo: Courtesy the Christie Archive

“I cannot think of a more fitting way to celebrate my grandmother’s life in this 125th anniversary year,” Mathew Prichard, Christie’s grandson, told BBC of the exhibition.

The Bankside Gallery show precedes a festival dedicated to Christie which will take place in the author’s hometown of Torquay, England, in September.

A rare photo of a young Christie
Photo: courtesy The Christie Archives

“Agatha Christie: Unfinished Portrait” will be on view at Bankside Gallery, London, from August 26 to September 6, 2015.