News Item: 00017

26th Mar 2007

The Rice Portrait of Jane Austen

Source: http://www.christies.com

At Christie's Important Old Master Paintings auction in New York, 19th April 2007, one of the world's most intriguing literary portraits will be offered for sale, The Rice Portrait of Jane Austen, by British society painter Ozias Humphry (1742-1810). Estimated to fetch between $400,000 and $800,000, the picture is the property of one of the author's descendants.

The Rice Portrait of Jane Austen is described as one of the single most controversial and intriguing literary portraits in existence. The portrait first came to prominence in 1884 when it was reproduced as a portrait of the novelist Jane Austen (1775-1817), as the frontispiece to the first published collection of her letters. The editor of these letters was Edward, Lord Brabourne (1829-1893), the great-nephew of Jane Austen and for the next sixty years it was accepted as the most important image of the novelist.

Edward, Lord Brabourne was the son of Fanny Knatchbull, to whom Jane Austen's sister, Cassandra, gave most of Jane's remaining correspondence. On the basis of testimony from Thomas Austen (who knew Jane), the Harding-Newmans (who knew Jane) and Fanny Caroline Lefroy (granddaughter of Jane Austen's brother James and an acknowledged authority on the Austen family), Lord Brabourne concluded that the portrait was of Jane Austen. Fanny Caroline Lefroy thought that the picture probably dated to '1788 or 9 making Austen not 14', while a newly discovered letter to Lord Brabourne from Jane Austen's great nephew, Cholmeley Austen-Leigh (1829-1899), confirmed that the only portrait Cholmeley knew of the authoress was a portrait taken 'at the beginning of her life'.

The portrait was widely accepted and was reproduced frequently in a number of editions, including authoritative books emanating from both sides of the family as well as in recent years.